Recently Google has become the most popular search engine in the world. Among the factors of its success are first-rate performance, ease of use and the high quality of search results ensured by a sophisticated algorithm that includes such Google’s know-how as the PageRank. Developed by Larry Page (allegedly hence the name) and Sergey Brin in 1995, PageRank measures the site relevancy by assessing the quality and quantity of its inbound links.
To put it differently, PageRank considers all the incoming links as “votes” for a webpage, so the more links a page has, the higher PageRank it’s likely to show.
Yet the quality of links also matters. Thus, five links from authoritative search engine-optimized sites with good content are better than a hundred of links from low-quality or spammy sites (the so called bad neighborhood) which, by the way, can provoke Google to ban your site. Those webmasters who try to outwit Google ranking tools are more likely to outwit themselves, in fact. Nowadays link manipulation has achieved such a massive scale that Google had to introduce special punishments, devaluing “false” links. Thus, if your incoming links have been bought or come from irrelevant and poor quality sites, your website really runs the risk of being frowned upon by Google and – potentially penalized in a certain way.
Another popular path that some people take to grow their PageRank is link exchange. Either that is the case of linking by mutual agreement (“Link to me and I’ll link to you”) which is a popular topic within some online forums, or a kind of family linking, like “This is my grandma’s site, that’s the site of my best friend, and click here to see my dog’s site”, Google tends to lower the value of both, especially if the topics of linked sites don’t match or their IPs coincide. In addition, from the point of view of PageRank raising, reciprocal links are less important than one way links, so such an exchange won’t help you much with high ranking.
The good news is that, apart from gray- to black-hat link building methods, there also exist many legitimate and effective ways to get incoming links. Some of them will be favorable to your site’s traffic, others will optimize it for SEs, and there are things which are good for both.
To to get more incoming links, start your link-baiting campaign. Let the online world know about you: sign the guest books of the sites with related content theme, leave testimonials, write product reviews (e.g. on Amazon.com), post comments on blogs or start your own blog and tag its posts on Technorati.
Submitting your articles to the trustworthy websites with high PageRank, such as iSnare, EzineArticles and GoArticles might also be a smart idea. Next, you can submit your site to free or paid directories; in particular it would be great to get listed in DMOZ; or create your own topical directory.
While PageRank refers not to the site as a whole, but to each separate page, optimize your site’s navigational structure to better distribute its PageRank. Consider arranging some freebies – people will appreciate it and possibly refer to your site.
It is also advisable to update your website regularly so it always appears fresh and interesting for visitors.
All in all, the above tips have been proven to work, but still please keep in mind that the most important step to increase your site’s PageRank is to fill it with unique high-quality content, easy to understand and worthy of linking to. Good and relevant content can be more significant for developing your authority than other factors, so make sure it is your starting point when optimizing your site.
As such, if you can’t create brilliant content yourself, hire copywriting specialists whose work will help to grow your site’s popularity and make it be in the lead.