There are a number of SEO (search engine optimization) companies that claim they can help you increase your PR (Google Page Rank) and get you to the top of search rankings. The fact is, you can do this yourself, and the only thing it will cost you is some of your time.

Google PR is a number based system that ranks a website from zero to ten with ten being the highest rank you can receive. The higher the number the higher your website will appear in the rankings for search terms related to the content of your web site.

Google is very content oriented. This means that when it “crawls” (the process by which Google looks at every web page) websites to index them, they look for valued content so that when people search the web they can point searchers directly to this information.

You need to add original and informative content to your web site. In other words if you sell fishing gear, you need to write informative articles about the subject. If you sell fishing gear then chances are you are already an expert at the subject. Just formulate your thoughts, write an article and add it to your website.

Once your article is added to your site then give your site's visitors the ability to comment on it. Comments are added content to your website that others will add for you. Do a search on a subject yourself and you will find in those search results either posts to a message board or comments on an article.

Now that you have the content on your website and comments to add additional content you need to let your visitors share this article with the rest of the world wide web either by posting a link to the article in social networks such as Digg, MySpace and Twitter, or by allowing visitors to use your article on their own sites and blogs, so as long as they post a link back to your website. This link process is known as a one way link and helps increase your PR as well. Indocquent's social bookmark utility gives you the ability to do all of this for free.

Now that you know how you can increase your PR, search engine rankings, and website popularity, just go ahead and do it. The next time Google “crawls” the world wide web to index their database you should see a significant increase in PR and visitors.

I am sure you have read plenty of research on the subject and without a doubt the best way to increase your Google Page Rank is to write clear, concise and informative articles in regards to what your website is about and submit those articles to various article directories such as E-Zine and Article Dashboard.

Now you may be wondering how exactly that increases your Google Page Rank. For starters you are providing quality content about something that you are an expert in. Second by submitting the article to article directories you are giving others an opportunity to place your article on their websites, thereby spreading your knowledge, and finally when you add in a resource box to your article, you provide a link back to your website.

These links in your resource box are called one way links. In other words other websites point to you but your site does not point back. These are the most powerful links you can have as a web owner.

The formula for success in determining your Google Page Rank is simply obtaining as many one way links as possible. So here is your step by step process on how to do just that.

Start by developing a plan where you will write one article each day that is related to the subject content of your website. Each article, although related to your website, should hit a different topic daily. For example, if your website is about food, one day you can write about good books about food, and then on day two write about good food businesses, on day three you can write about recipes to try and so on. The reason is when you submit your articles to these article directories you do not want your articles competing with each other in the same categories. If your website is about fitness, you would not want to submit 5 articles in the nutrition category in the same week. They just won't all get picked up by other websites.

Once you have your article written go ahead and submit them to article directories. It can take anywhere from one to seven days for the article to get published. Just remember you can continue submitting articles even though previous ones aren't published yet. Do not forget to write your resource box with a link back to your website. It should read like this, “John Doe is the executive chef of ABC Restaurants in New York City. You can learn more about his cooking style by visiting his website at…”. You get the point.

So you have written your articles, you have submitted them, so now what? Well you continue to write. It takes anywhere from one to three months to see your results. Google re-indexes websites about every quarter and depending on when you start this process you might not get indexed until the following quarter. Just be patient and follow the plan. You will see your website hits go up along with your Google Page Rank.

• Optimize your site with the keywords that are used more frequently than those which are not looked for. One can use an SEO tool to get an idea of the best possible keywords to suit his/her site.
• The title of your site must have the keyword. Along with the title, the Meta tag descriptions must have it in them and these Meta tags should not be the same on each page of your site. Make them different by having a new keyword, so that they are listed on more search engines at a higher ranking.
• Collect a thorough information of your competitors, regarding their keywords and most importantly their interlinks. This survey will give you an insight of their status and how to compete with them. You can use link exchange to get you site viewed more at the search engine optimization. But, be careful, not to link with the sites that are linking out, but link with the ones that are linking in.
• Robots, Content type, Description, and Keywords are the meta tags that you should consider upon. Robot Meta tags would help you know the different search engine spiders and it is up to you to decide whether you want or don't want them to come through your site. Content type Meta tag explains the type of your page and helps the search engine optimization to list it accordingly. Description Meta tag displays information under the title. The key to make it more useful is that you should keep the description within 150 characters and the keyword should not repeat more than thrice. The keywords used here should be present in the main body of the text too.
• Use your keywords in the web address too. This makes it more specific and points out the type of your site to attract more traffic.
• The file name for your webpage should have the keyword in it
• Now comes the most important part, the site map of your website. This is the place where all the other pages of your website are connected. This sitemap should be clear to understand, so that the user can find the page he is looking for, easily. A nicely done up sitemap helps in high ranking your website.
• Search engine optimization is done based on the type or contents of your website, so it would be better if you do not allow or block the pages that are not relevant and you don't want these to be considered for search engine optimization. You can do this by simply saying “Disallow…. folder name”.
• For google search engine optimization, it has a tool called “Google Sitemaps” where you can find suitable links to your websites and other tips as well.
• The final tip for search engine optimization is to validate it. You need not buy a software for the purpose, it can be done by using various tools available online.