Website Promotion: The Do's and Don'ts for Boosting Page Rank

Website promotion is a major concern for e-based business owners. Even the most cleverly-designed website is destined for failure if customers don't know about it and can't find it with a quick Internet search. "Conventional" ways of promoting a website abound. Banner ads and pay-per-clicks are the most common. These can be very effective advertising methods. However, there are dozens of ways to achieve free website promotion. One of these ways is by boosting a site's page rank.
Page rank is a bit like the Internet's version of a popularity contest. Search engines like Google and Yahoo rate a given web page according to the number of inbound links to it. The premise is that a page to which lots of other pages are linking must be important. If the page is important, it thusly ranks higher on a search page. Essentially, it's like a vote of confidence from another web page.
It isn't just inbound links that boost page rank. Search engines also place a "value" on each inbound link to a web page. Links that come from other pages that have a high ranking are worth more weight. It's more than a simple vote of confidence: it's a celebrity endorsement.
Achieving a high page rank increases a website's chances of a top 10 slot in a Google search. The same goes for a number of other search engines, since they are powered by Google. It is not the only factor used to assign a search engine ranking. It is an important one though, and it's free (unlike banner ads.)
Website promotion for free is easy with a few creative tips for boosting page rank:
* DO seek out other sites and offer to trade links. Most web business owners are happy to engage in this type of symbiotic relationship. After all, it boosts their page rank too. Use discretion: avoid direct competitors. Instead, choose websites that are related to your business. For example, if your business is baby furniture, trade links with an online parenting magazine. Better yet, find a site that carries a lot of weight. Do an Internet search of terms related to your type of business. See which sites rank in the top five. Those are the ones to hit up for link trades.
* DO flood the net with articles related to your area of business. The Internet is rife with article submission sites. They recruit writers to submit articles on every topic imaginable. Articles submitted are then provided free of charge to interested parties for publishing on the web. Most every article distributor allows writers to include links back to their own sites. When someone else publishes an article you've written on the Internet, presto! Your link is out there for the world to see and for search engines to rank.
* DO entice external links to by creating lots of pages. Don't let your web space go to waste. The more pages that you have, the more inbound links you are able to generate.
* DO focus on good content. Don't just add pages for the sake of having pages. Make sure they contain quality text. If writing is not your thing, hire someone else to do it for you. The better quality text you stock your pages with, the more legitimate inbound links you may garner.
* DON'T join "link farms." The novice website owner sometimes unwittingly falls into this trap. Link farms are groups of websites that hyperlink to every other site in the "farm." Initially it may sound like a cooperative way to boost rankings. You help a group of people, and they return the favor. However, many search engines considers link farms to be spam. It frowns upon these contrived methods of website promotion. Ultimately, search engines are likely to ban a link farm altogether. This in turn could hurt your own site. In fact, it could lead to banishment from the search engines. It's best to simply avoid the temptation to join a link farm.
You can download a page rank checker from Google for free. It's a useful tool for keeping tabs on how your web pages are faring. It is the best way to gauge the effectiveness of your efforts at free website promotion.