Google PageRank is technically a program

Off-page SEO factors are the external factors that affect the Page rank of your websites pages.  Off Page optimization (often referred to as off-site optimization) is the opposite of On Page optimization.  Specifically, this means external page factors, i.e. the number of incoming links from other well-known and (most of all) topic-relevantGoogle PageRank ™ = Σ Backlinks?

The number of backlinks in recent years had won for the Google PageRank ™ a reasonable amount of significance, the quality (keyword: theme relevance) and the growth of the external link structure is an important criterion.

Google spends quite some time in revision of the assessment process relating to PageRank and quality over quantity continues to be the top priority for both OnPage and Off Page issues.  The PageRank has certainly had an influence on the frequency of the crawler visits.

How else could a brand new website become search engine friendly and (within a short time) achieve a good ranking?

The Google PageRank is technically a program or algorithm for reading and evaluating websites.  A page rank is a kind of decoration (medal if you will), that the Google sites (there is more than one) give to express confidence in a website.  The ranking (PageRank) that Google gives does not affect other websites (unless it is written into the other search engine). 

There was much confusion in recent years about Google's PageRank (PR), but these rumours make it clear how risky it is to set the strategy for search engine optimization only on the off-page factors.

The assumption that the search engines evaluation strategy (programs, algorithms) change over time is simply a fact.  They are constantly updating the search engine.  Does this mean that you will have to change your websites on-page content every now and then?  Yes it does, but the changes should be fairly small if your website is giving a service or is useful.  If your website is artificially elevated in its page rank (through text that is over optimised or keyword stuffed) then you will suffer more.  Don’t forget that even the most comprehensive off-page optimization can never compensate for a lack of on-page optimization.

How do I get backlinks?

Through unique content that adds value to information.

Example:

Number 1 - Unique Content: eBay has peak times for selling.

Number 2 - Unique Content with info: eBay has peak times for selling based on click rates.  Yesterday the best time to sell was at 7pm because that was when most people logged on.  That is an increase of 15 minutes from last week. 

Now imagine if your website was posting information like that, daily, for free!!! Lots more people will link to the web-pages of example number 2, than they will of example number 1.  This is called link bait.

Other ways are to ask people to link to you, in return for linking to them.  Lots of webmasters will be happy to do this, just as long as your website is not in competition with theirs or counters the message of theirs.  People who have programs that monitor links in and out will often reply to you as they are often requesting links from others themselves.

According to the Google guidelines, external links should be organically grown.  This means through either, contacting people and offering to swap links (link exchange requests), or through people linking to you off their own steam (often when a topic you are involved in is mentioned).  The back-link to link farms shopping definitely has a negative effect on the ranking. 

You can create links to your website yourself by using social websites such as Digg, etc.  Publish info on the internet onto blogs or article sites and then link to yourself.