The fourth rule of pagerank states that a link will only pass on the full wham of its pagerank once it's been in place for a while. Links come and go, you might be in favor one week and then old news the next week, but links that have been around for a long time indicate enduring value and stronger relationships, so they're more valuable and will help your pagerank more.
* Note: These "rules", as I put them, are anything but. They're just assumptions based on observations.
Taking all these things into consideration, it's relatively easy to develop a strategy for building your pagerank.
- Write articles and submit them to article sites with the proviso that people using the articles include your author's "resource box" containing a link to your site. Be careful that articles you submit are at least 25% different from articles on your website. When a search engine sees two identical sites, it will give the most credit (pagerank, search engine ranking) to the one it sees first -- that can be a bit of a gamble.
- Become an authority on a subject, or create a valuable site that people will naturally recommend to others.
- Pay someone to find links for you. Elancers (for instance) typically charge per hour or per qualified link for this service.
- Submit to search directories.
- And so on, and so forth.
But the real question is: Does pagerank actually do anything? Or do we just get in a big flap about it because it's the most obvious thing we can actually measure when it comes to SEO?
While Google are adamant that Pagerank still forms the basis for all their web search tools, it's a smaller piece of the picture than many people realize.
It's important to remember that your aim is to have your website rise in the search engine listings for your particular keywords. Got that? Tattoo it on your forehead in reverse script so you see it when you look in the mirror.
Then go back to your elementary SEO and you'll see that to help your website rise in the rankings you need to do the following things:
- Ensure you're building relevant link relationships with appropriate sites
- Ensure that people linking to your site are using appropriate keywords in their link text
- Ensure that your site is suitably optimized for your keywords
So where does PR fit into this? PR is largely a reflection of the first task on that list. When you have a high PR it means you have some good links coming your way.
If they're the right kind of links then they (and your PR) might help you in your search engine rankings, but it's just one part of the picture.
Google has many other considerations when it figures out your ranking, and you shouldn't focus on your Pagerank at the expense of these other things.
Where PR is useful is as leverage for building new link relationships. People will be much more willing to swap links with a PR6 site than a PR1 site, because that will benefit their PR as well.
Since they value your association, your link partners will also be more willing to do as you ask, for example: link using certain text, or link from certain pages. So a high PR can turn into high search engine rankings, but indirectly.
It helps you to get good links from good sites. If you're just about collecting the little green pixels and you don't pay attention to the quality and relevancy of these links, however, they're not going to help you VERY much.
And at end of the day, you don't really need PR for getting good links either. Particularly if you're very charming, or your site is particularly good.
If you're providing an excellent resource, or you have a service, gimmick, tool or widget that people love, you're going to find yourself attracting links and building that PR regardless.
The main point I'm trying to make is that PR is only one piece in a much more complicated picture, and it's certainly not the be all and end all for your search engine rankings.
Testament to this fact is that it's by no means uncommon to see sites with low PR beating high PR sites in the search engines. What is important is that you take a whole-picture approach to your search engine optimization, and view PR as simply a reflection of the strength of the links to your site.
If you focus on the rest of your SEO strategy, then your PR should fall nicely into place as well.
