I get asked this question on occasion, and people are usually surprised how little page rank has to do with technology.

There are a lot of salesmen on the web -- called Search Engine Optimizers (SEOs) -- that claim that they can improve your rank with a bunch of META tags, blogs, and analysis. Some of what they say is common sense... its probably just a rehash of Google's own advice for improving your rank.

Everything else is a con.

Based on what I've read and tested, I think the following four points are all you need to know to legitimately boost your page rank:

1. Have useful content that Google can spider
2. Offer a useful service
3. Use public relations and marketing to get high-quality web sites to link to you
4. Avoid a rigid thesaurus, or a rigid style guide

The first one is obvious: make useful content that people want. Making spiderable pages is the only technical requirement here, and is pretty simple. Put your content in HTML, XHTML, plain text, or PDF. Do not require JavaScript or Flash for people to see your content, or link between pages: use it only to enhance content. Simple. Done.

The second is more important if you do not have a lot of content on your site. Its okay to have a site that is all AJAX, as long as it provides a useful service that lots of people are willing to talk about. However, doing this is more difficult...

Which brings us to the third less obvious tip... people have a hard time understanding that the Google rank is very similar to your identity or reputation. Its not about what you say, its about what other people say about you. If a big, important site links to you, this usually means you have something useful on your site. This trick is essential for keeping spam sites (or splogs) low in the rankings.

If you want high rankings, you need to schmooze those folks who run the big important sites to write an article about you. That's PR, and I'm not qualified to talk about that... suffice it to say, it's no longer a technical problem.

The fourth tip is a bit painful, and not often mentioned, but its true. I've read several books on information architecture for web sites. Some of them are useful, but unfortunately they lead people astray when it comes to Google rank.

Most communication experts believe sites should have a consistent vocabulary and style. The obvious benefit is that its easier for a human to read content if its a consistent style. It also gives the illusion of a single author, as opposed to a committee.

However, consistency has a huge down side when it comes to the web. People searching for your site don't care one bit about your vocabulary! They have their own vocabulary, and search with their own terms. Google won't do synonyms, so if their exact word is not in content on your site, you will not be ranked. Simple as that. Site indexes with synonyms do help, but might not be enough.

For example, take my post about how I hate String Theory. Its one of my site's more popular pages. When people search for string theory wrong, I'm ranked #55 . When they search for string theory crap my site is #6.

However, if they search for string theory sucks, my site is nowhere in the 763,000 results. Nowhere! Those poor souls who hate string theory as much as I do are missing out on my rant! This must not continue...

As an experiment I made a modification to the original article on Thursday, August 31st, 2006. I added the word sucks very near the phrase string theory, then played the waiting game... As of September 04, if you search for string theory sucks, my site is #7.

Of course, after I publish this article I'm sure my rank will increase even more. After all this Google inspired navel-gazing, my site is lousy with the phrase string theory sucks.

In conclusion, put down the Search Engine Optimization for Dummies book, and dust off your copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People. Your Google rank is much more about PR than technology. Maybe an intranet-based Google appliance cares about those META tags, but nobody else does.

UPDATE 9-04-2007: A full year later, I checked my Google rank for string theory sucks, and my site is #2 and #3. For string theory crap its #1. However, for string theory wrong it only rose to #39... probably because of a book with a similar title.