Help me I'm drowning!

Ok here's the rub...... after much time and money spent on PPC by quite simply burying my head in the sand and refusing to deal with SEO because the word 'algorithm' gave me an headache I finally wound up here . I once had a PR of 4 just by chance and a Google listing on page 1 for my keywords 'Body jewellery' (there are others but that's the biggy). Then I vanished without trace around a year ago and my PR dropped to 1. I couldnt see what I'd done wrong so I simply chose to think that google had done something that I'd never understand to their algo' and that was that. I did think for a while that perhaps the problem was that my site uses frames, then that I had a popup-onexit questionaire that the big G wouldn't like but on joining this forum things became a little clearer. Firstly I realised the the disasterous change came around the time that I ditched my text link menu for a java applet popout menu and that I had provided no sitemap, so no internal links. That I rectified just before the last dodgy dance. also I noticed that I had no baclinks from other sites. I have gathered a few over the last 6 weeks or so, mostly PR4 and some PR3 but also 7 PR5 and 6 PR6 links all from relevent sites. I've added more content also. But at this dance so far I still see my terrible PR1. I have an identical mirror site ( bodyjewellerydirect.com) that has been linked to for some time by an SEO company that Iam paying to help me and because of that link the .com site has a PR of 3 even though i have a robots.txt banning googlebot from spidering it and it has no other backlinks. Also for the last 6 weeks or so that SEO company has been linking to the .co.uk site not the .com. I must say that I have seen a jump in my placement on google for the above mentioned keyword from nowhere to page 2/3 but I'm really anxious to get a better PR to aide me in gaining some more link exchanges.
Does anyone have any ideas of what I can do to improve things further or should I just hang in there and wait....... and not reach for the paracetamols just yet????

Cheers,

Jon

http://www.bodyjewellerydirect.co.uk

Hi Jon, I would just hang in there and wait to be honest. My PR changes from 3 to grey bar and back to 3 quite often. one of my customers sites is doing the same. I think that the PR system is still broken at the moment as is google in general. I don't think that this latest dance has fixed anything as I have found cached results of pages over 12 months old. It's very frustrating but what can we do?
Answers on a postcard please.

Hi Garybag,
yup I guess......just my luck that google goes n breaks itself just as I try to get my site sorted out.... like turning on the lights and finding out i'm blind!! lol .......

I just wish I could get a PR4 so that my backlinks would at least show......



Patience is a virtue though I'm told...

Its not your PR that allows backlinks to show its the PR of the backlinks themselves

mmmmmm yeh but like I say I have a 7 PR5 backlinks, and 6 PR6 and a few more PR 4s but none show on Google.....

R they new links? Maybe those sites haven't been reentered in Google data base?

The PR's that you mention, are they the PR of the sites main page or the page where your link is located?

i've seen google take up to 2-3 months to index links, so if these are new links, just be patient. That's about all I can add...