How do i increase my page ranking and how does it really work?
How does it benefit the site?
I did it by starting a bunch of link exchanges with related sites. The more links pointing at your site (especially if those sites have high PR themselves) the higher your site will rank. Just avoid link farms. They can do more harm than good.
How important is PR really? I've got a buddy that swears that PR does not matter that much...
he's got other tactics that i'm trying to implement and emulate that he says don't rely on PR at all.
Well...you can't "rely" on anything really. Pagerank is something endlessly argued about. There are a few camps ...some say it's meaningless. Others say it does have a value. Personally I am in the value camp as there is obvious evidence to it's value.
How about this...do some searching at Google for some keywords you want to rank for. Check the top 5 result sites and see what their PR is. I have a suspicion that none are zero.
My forum is a PR3. what does that really mean...NOTHING if you are not selling ads or trying to make money on your site. If you are trying to make money with your site then having a higher PR ranking is a positive thing and helps you justify higher ad rates because your site has verified higher traffic.
The concept of how its determined, no matter how many flowcharts I've seen still befuddles me.
Pagerank is fairly imnportant. For example, i you have a site with 5 pages, and a pagerank of 3/4 you could probably sell links or even the site. The same site wth PR0 might be next to worthless. Many people buy links on sites with pagerank
It increases the value of a site, (thats for sure) because you can sell links on it to other sites. Other than that, it adds credibility to your site.
Unfortunately, people can get a high pagerank by link spamming
How do i increase my page ranking and how does it really work?
How does it benefit the site?
You increase yor page ranking by getting links from other sites. It benefits your site because it makes links on your site more valuable and makes your site more credible.
To put it simply, you increase your pagerank by getting more incoming links, especially from sites that have a good pagerank themselves. This is done by mainly creating good content and doing a bit of promotion so people know your site exists.