What is page rank? How to increase your page rank.

Google itself offers the best description of what page rank is.  “PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important”.”

In other words, a PageRank results from a “ballot” among all the other pages on the World Wide Web about how important a page is. A hyperlink to a page counts as a vote of support. The PageRank of a page is defined recursively and depends on the number and PageRank metric of all pages that link to it (”incoming links”). A page that is linked to by many pages with high PageRank receives a high rank itself. If there are no links to a web page there is no support for that page.

Google assigns a numeric weighting from 0-10 for each webpage on the Internet; this PageRank denotes a site’s importance in the eyes of Google. The PageRank is derived from a theoretical probability value on a logarithmic scale like the Richter Scale. The PageRank of a particular page is roughly based upon the quantity of inbound links as well as the PageRank of the pages providing the links. It is known that other factors, e.g. relevance of search words on the page and actual visits to the page reported by the Google toolbar also influence the PageRank.[citation needed] In order to prevent manipulation, spoofing and Spamdexing, Google provides no specific details about how other factors influence PageRank.[citation needed]

Numerous academic papers concerning PageRank have been published since Page and Brin’s original paper.  In practice, the PageRank concept has proven to be vulnerable to manipulation, and extensive research has been devoted to identifying falsely inflated PageRank and ways to ignore links from documents with falsely inflated PageRank.

So how do I increase my website’s page rank?

First off, page rank is no longer as important as it once was. Page rank has very little to do with search ranking.    Page rank is just a value given to your website by Google, you should be more concerned with where your website shows in actual Google searches.  However, Page Rank is considered a status symbol and if you must have it, here are some ideas.

How to raise your page rank score

DO

• Write quality content for your  website frequently.
• Engage in industry message boards and offer valuable feedback.
• Work with quality businesses who compliment your own and share links with them.
• Have your business written about by respected media outlets, bloggers and industry journalists.
• Engage with your visitors.
• Get involved in online trade groups, associations and media outlets that you can write articles for and link back to your website.
• Use common sense.

DO NOT

• Use paid links services or link sharing services.
• Use web rings.
• Spam message boards just to get your signature with a back link.
• Link back to your website from garbage or spam websites.
• Try to use jedi mind tricks on Google.  They are Master Sith and your tricks will not work.
• Try to cheat the search engines.
• Create dozens of garbage pass through domains in order to trick Google.  Again, they are Sit Masters who know all the tricks played by the Padawan.