How Do You Increase the
PageRank of a Webpage?
By definition, PageRank is increased solely when other websites (not your own) have links that point at you. Google will count at least one link per webpage all over the internet... no matter what website that webpage belongs to, or what language that webpage is in, as long as Google has allowed ("indexed") that webpage into their system... that is, as long as you can actually do a search on Google for that specific webpage and see it appear in the results. If Google does not index a webpage, then the links on that webpage cannot count as a link to you either, and will not have an effect on your PageRank. But if Google does index that webpage, then if there is a link to your website on it, Google will count that link... adding to your PageRank, overall.
All links count (again, if Google allows/indexes the webpage the link is on), and this goes by webpage... not just one link per website, but instead, every single webpage on the website that has a link to you. For those of you who have set up a Google WebMasters account (it's free), you can actually see EVERY backlink to EACH page of your website that Google counts.
Links from other websites that lead to you are called backlinks, to differentiate them from links you have on your website from page to page, within your website. In context, the terms are used interchangeably. Getting backlinks is a sum-aggregate game, where you need to understand the value that you get from each of those links -- that is, the 'amount of linkjuice' that backlink gives you, and enough 'linkjuice, total' is what pushes your webpage from a PR0 to a PR1, then with more backlinks on webpages that Google gets around to indexing (or re-caching - when it will realize that the backlink now exists and count it), you wind up with a PR2... PR3, and higher. A PR3 score is actually competitive enough for most people's needs... and a PR4, which takes a bit of real work, makes you nearly invincible for most things you want to win. The highest value of any webpage is a PR10... for example, the front page of Google (google.com) is a PR9, and their Google Keyword Tool page is a PR8. Like everyone else, every webpage on Google has a different PR score.
Since the lowest score is a PR-0 (meaning very few, if any, links to your website exist anywhere on the internet -- and the search engines themselves do not count as links increasing your PR score)... and the highest score is a PR10 (Google/Yahoo/Bing/YouTube/Wikipedia territory), then you probably realized that this score is 'logarithmic', meaning that getting from a PR-0 to a PR1 is much easier than getting from a PR1 to a PR2, or from a PR2 to a PR3, etc.
And that is correct: each level is a 'range.' So one PR2 website may be close to a PR3... and another just reached PR2 territory... so the first of these PR2 websites has more power. Again, PR is based on a single page; so when I say 'one PR2 website' and 'another PR2 website', I simply mean comparing pages from competing websites that show up for a certain keyword, to see who has more power to show up higher. And usually, the front page of a website has the highest PR score, even if the webpage that shows up is not the front page and could have a lower score. Websites that promote a very specific webpage over and over can cause that specific page to have a higher score than their main page, if they have a lot of backlinks to that exact page.
For instance, I might promote my 'video training' page. So I may have more backlinks pointing there than my home page, but even then, it's unlikely that I actually have more pages pointing at my videos page than at my home page. Besides: my videos page is linked to directly from my home page, so by promoting my home page, the PR score I get is SHARED with those links... giving them inflated PR anyway, by virtue of being closely linked to my home page. This is also why you often see the top-level pages of any website showing up first in search results, such as the 'contact us' page, the 'about us' page, and even the 'sitemap' page of a website. That's because they have the highest PR absorbtion from the main page of that site... since those links exist directly on the main page. In any case, "savvy" competitors know that they need to raise their PR (get more backlinks to their website from other websites) in order to BE more competitive. And since their competitors know the same thing (if they are also savvy), then they will compete back from time to time by getting more backlinks themselves, if they see themselves slipping on the search results ranking. This is exactly the reason we need an automated backlink generator that produces results Google will accept... we have to actually get it out and use it from time to time, to keep up with savvy competitors... or competitors who BECAME savvy recently, to combat the loss of income from losing top spots they used to have a monopoly over... since their competitors never knew more about competing than they did. Our advantage: we can always compete BACK, FAST. Do that a few times, and your competitors (who have no idea how you're beating them) have to finally give up on the keywords you want, accept their place, and try to improve other keywords (that you haven't thought about competing on, yet).
