I know that there are many factors that feed into a webpage’s ranking on Google and other search engines when a search query is executed. One of those is the reputation of the website, or in Google-terms PageRank (PR).
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Dean Richard
[ Editor ]
Links, links, links! Google ranks your site based largely on context, so spend some time focusing on link building. Get links from higher PageRank sites, and your page rank will go up in turn. Articles posted on reputable article sites help, and if you have something newsworthy, a press release is worth the money (I have used Buzzle & PRWeb with great results- and they allow you to track them easily). If you have a blog or something similar, offering to write guest blogs for blogs related to your topics can be great for your PageRank.
A quick on-page analysis can help- are you delivering a strong theme which is focused on a few keyowords, or does Google have trouble figuring out what your message is? You’d be surprised how common this is, and can make a world of difference (SEOmoz.org has a great term extractor that is free to use).
“Fast” can be relative- going form PR 1 to PR 2 shouldn’t take much time, going from PR 5 to PR 6 can take longer.
Once you get to PR4, you start to get into league where other sites who are doing their homework play, so you just have to work that much harder. A well orchestrated SEO campaign usually does the trick over a period of a month or two. Set goals, and set them high- links from national publications or industry standard publications are not out of reach, and you’ll pick up lots of PR4-5 links in the process. Offer to write articles for them, and be specific in what you’re looking for- a link from their site with specific anchor text. That is PageRank gold, and a solidly written article for a reputable site or journal can lead to future links. At this point, you should launch another Press Release, and if you time everything right and produce quality content, you could be appearing in a few newspapers (whose websites will usually link to you) and very reputable websites and journals- all of which should be PR5 or higher, which will increase your PR. Oh, and blog with a link to one of your sites landing pages in every post. Do this every day.
Obviously, that’s a lot of work (articles+submit to large publications+press release+links building+blogs), but it’s worth it if you want PR in a hurry. If you follow that formula, I would expect to move from 4 to 5 within a month or two, with hopefully steady progression after that.
Also: I hope this is advise you don’t need, but avoid PR1 or 2 sites like the plague (‘cuz they are). Google considers PR<3 all but irrelevant and you can spend lots of money and time submitting worthless links. Spend your time hooking the big fish and you’ll see the benefits.
Great question! I’d like to know the answer too. :)