Have you ever asked yourself if PageRank is really important? PageRank or PR is basically a measure of your sites popularity with other websites, based on the links pointing to your site.

When crawling a site, the search engine robots will follow the links on a page, unless they are directed by HTML code to ignore the links. A vote is counted for each link they find pointing to a site. These votes tally up to equal the PR for the site. There is much more to it, but in the short version this is the way it works.

Each link to your homepage or another page on your site will add a bit to the PR. The PageRank of the linking site is factored into the formula, so not all votes are equal. The linking site is sort of sharing their PR with you. The vote carries more weight when it comes from a high PR site. This doesn't mean that a link from a PR1 site will somehow hurt your PR as some would have you believe. In general, a link pointing to your site will not reduce your PR.

It is not the same story for outbound links, so be very careful who you link to. Before I get too deep into that, let's take a step back and discuss some common ways sites develop links, then we can cover the pitfalls.

One fairly common method of getting links to your site is through link exchanges. Basically you put a link on your site and another webmaster adds a link to your site on one of their pages. It is not a good idea to link from a site with huge link pages full of unrelated links. The "vote" would be so diluted from the other links so as to be almost meaningless. A more important point is simply if you link to a banned site, your site will be penalized for doing it. This will kill your PageRank!

You should keep an eye on your linking partners for two very important reasons. First, make sure they are still linking to you. Second, make sure they have not been banned. If you find they have deleted your link, ask them to replace it. However, if the other site has gotten banned, then remove their link from your site as soon as possible. Your site's PR will suffer if you link to a site that has been banned.

Linking is an important SEO strategy and as long as you keep an eye on your link partners it makes sense to exchange links. A better strategy, or one to use in addition, is generating one way links to your site. These are links that other sites put up that point to your site without you having to link to them. One way links can be developed in a variety of ways. Keep in mind that, because you have no control over them they can not hurt you. Here are 4 ways to get links back to your site.

1. Post comments on public forums, articles, blogs, etc. with a link to your site. 2. Submit your original content to social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Technorati, or any of the hundreds of other social sites on the net. 3. Submit articles on your topic to article databases and include a link to your site in the article resource box. 4. Pay for them. Although this is not my favorite way to develop them, it is available.

When you develop a linking strategy and stick to it you will quickly develop more links to your site than you would think. This will not only increase your PageRank, it will increase the overall traffic to your site.