Google has just released another PR update, sending my unranked blog to PR1, effectively immediately! This was bound to happen of course, however I would’ve preferred to be ranked higher like my friend and work colleague, Chris Hamilton. His blog shot from PR0 to PR3 due to two high PR backlinks, from what we can tell anyway. Well done Chris!

To give you a simple idea, Page Rank ( PR ) has been important in the past due to it defines your websites worth. People were selling links on their website, anywhere from $10/month to $300/month, depending on their PR. Problem being, Google was aware of this, (for a long time I believe) and hit a lot of blogs hard, banning their website from Google and shooting their PR to 0.

There are certain ways of increasing PR and traffic to your website and this is generalised by two categories, White Hat SEO or Black Hat SEO. As you can probably already tell, White Hat is natural where Black Hat is done illegally. I don’t condone Black Hat SEO, I believe it’s pointless. You can gain higher returns over the long term using simple White Hat SEO techniques and various marketing strategies. Google is the biggest search engine in the world, why risk banning your website and losing 70-80% of your traffic?

To find more about White Hat SEO, Black Hat SEO and SEO, click here.