Understanding PageRank & Creating Backlinks

Even though the title of this post is ‘Understanding PageRank‘, you don’t really need to understand it, you just need to know it exists. It is basically a set of rules, used by Google, to determine how important your website is and therefore how high it should be placed in the list of results. It’s all measured by a massive equation that I wish I invented. Wikipedia give you a ‘simplified’ description of how it works, but I still just don’t get it.

It works on some sort of points system, the more points you have, the higher up you are. I probably have 0 points right now, but the good news is, there are ways in which to get these points, treat it like a race and you want to WIN.

The main way of accruing ‘points’ is to create backlinks (see dictionary –>), links which connect your website to other sites with a higher PageRank than you will automatically push you higher. Backlinks can come easily and without much effort, if the content of what you’re writing is good, other websites would want to link to yours. Especially websites who are writing the same content as you, this can be most valuable. But, don’t be lazy about it, put your back into creating backlinks!

• Post on forums about your topic.
• Comment in other blogs (similar to yours).
• Do a bit of guest blogging.
• Be pro-active.

You will be doing the other site a favour by adding to their content, but doing yourself a favour by creating a backlink to your site and improving traffic. Always include a relevant anchor text, this way Google and other search engines know that this is what the webpage is about and is therefore more likely to rank it higher… For example:

A good site I have just searched and read is Kharim Tomlinson’s Awesome Backlink Strategy.

Remember – Put your back into creating backlinks!