ALso concentrate on getting Higher PR incoming links.
SEO is an ongoing and tiresome process but the rewards are rich.

Position depend of course of strong links, but they are difficult to gain. Many pages with high PR add rel="nofollow" like this page, but all is to defeat by quantity. Mayby not 100 links, but 1000, or 5000 links. You should remember about your page's content and use <strong> to intensify your keywords. Important is also title and description.

This is a really cool question...I am currently trying to build my own back links everywhere I can. Can someone tell me please, what exactly 'rel="nofollow"' does?

thank you
sean

That means you are telling google not to follow the outbound link.

Sean, If the outbounds are relevant and of high quality, you may get some benifit, but I would suggest you should also try to get quality backlinks from relevant sites.

as many links as you can. but it has to be quality and related links to your site.

It means that your signature give nothing to position of your page.
You also put two the same links so the second link is ignored.
You should prepare link with text - keyword, no with adress. Links with text give better position for this keyword.