Is pagerank still important in google SEO?

[¢σяя вℓιмєу]

I have always been under the impression that having a high PageRank score is the key to getting placed highly within a google search. Today whilst doing some research within the keyword term 'software reseller' I noticed that the number 1 spot was a PageRank 4 and the number 10 spot was a PageRank 5. This blows my belief clean out the water and I'm now really confused. What is the purpose behind google's PageRank? How does a site get rewarded a no1 spot without it? Please help because I'm trying to optimize my site while it's in the sandbox so I can get a good placing when I am indexed. Thanks in advance.
To L.R
Please, I didn't say I wanted to hire S.E.O help. I just wanted to know the relevance of PageRank, thats all. B.T.W I followed your link and the only way you can guarentee what your offering is if you use black hat techniques. I want to rank fairly and be in a posistion I deserve. Black hat SEO tricks are not right, they steal money from hard working people who have an ecommerce business and cant get to google number one spot because someone has cheated and jumped the line. Also they are by no means long term posistions because we all know google's algoithum gets better and better all the time so one day your top, next day your page 900. Also people like me have a habit of reporting people who use or promote black hat seo. Play fair and lets all make the net a better place. Did you know the internet is only half the size we believe it to be, this is due to all the spam pages flying around. The black hat community is ruining one of the best things we have so as I said play fair

[imisidro]

Pagerank is an important COMPONENT in the Google search ranking algorithm -- keyword here is "component." Meaning it is only one of the factors that Google considers.

Otherwise, all you'll see in the top 10 are Washington Post articles, Yahoo, Wikipedia, etc.

Google still considers other factors -- relevance of the page, title tags, keywords in the URL, keywords in the content, Domain Strength, Inbound Links, Content Quality and Automated & Manual Penalties.

It's not just about pageranks -- because your site can only have a pagerank of 5 and see many #1 pages for its keywords

[Janeth D]

PageRank is only one factor and while it is important to Google it does not work the way you are thinking.

PageRank is a score that is increased and or decreased according to the number of links pointing at our site. Google scores a link on many different factors as to the amount of PR they will give the site they are linking to.

Another words a PR 1 site could very well help you more than a PR 6 site.

Now I can have thousands of links pointing at my site and have a PR 7 site yet not out rank you for the keyword custom web site design and you have a PR 1 site. All the links pointing at my site could be using the anchor text website design and while you have less links pointing at your site all of them could be using custom web site design.

While we both have website targeting the same market we are targeting two different keywords. You would outrank me on the keywords that you are targeting and I’d outrank you on the keywords I’m targeting.