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Question:
How can I increase the PageRank of my website on Google? It's been stuck at PR4 for almost a year! Thanks
Submitted by Cathy W.
Answer:
First of all, a website doesn't have Google PageRank (PR). PageRank is a page-specific item, meaning that Google calculates each page's PR independently of any other pages on the site.
If you have the Google Toolbar installed, you'll most likely see the PageRank indicator change as you navigate from page to page.
Google PageRank is based solely upon incoming links to the page. This includes links from other websites and links from other pages on the same site. Basically, to increase a page's PR, you need to get more links pointing to that page.
But all links aren't created equal! In addition to the number of links that point to a web page, Google's PageRank algorithm also takes into account the quality of those links. Links from a higher PR page count more for PR purposes than links from a lower PR page.
For example, your page has two links pointing to it: one from a PR5 page, the other from a PR3 page. The link from the PR5 page will boost your page's PR quite a bit more than the one from the PR3 page.
In fact, all other things being equal, since PageRank is based on a logarithmic scale, one link from a PR5 page could provide a larger PR boost than several links from PR3 pages!
To muddy the PR waters even more, the amount of PageRank that is transferred from any given page to your page is also dependant on how many other links are also on the linking page.
Since the PR available for transfer through the links must be shared between all the links on the page, the more links there are on the linking page, the smaller the PR boost received from the link.
I know this PageRank stuff is a bit complicated, but what you need to remember is quite simple:
Get as many inbound links to your web pages as you can, get links from the highest PR pages that you can, and get links from pages with the fewest competing links as possible.
That being said, any incoming link to your page will provide some PR boost, as long as the linking page isn't under a Google penalty.
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