Increasing Page Rank In Detail

The only way you can increase your Google Page Rank (PR) is to increase the number of links (in other words - inbound links) to your site. Thus you need to get other sites to link to you, either by paying for the link or by some other method.
It is better to have high PR sites link to you than low PR sites because High PR sites "push" more PRs to their links. Why? Because they have more PR to give in the first place. But keep in mind the number of links per page because if a page has a lot of links, less PR will then flow into those links.
Another thing is that it is better to get one-way links than two-way reciprocal links. So if a site links to you but you don't link back, it is better for PR. Or you can try a three-way link to "fool" Google.

1. Submit to directories, can be either paid or free directories. Since high PR sites push more PRs to their listed sites, a directory with high PR and categories with less links will benefit you more. Read our article on Effective Directory Submission for more details.
2. Link exchange, best done with other sites with similar topics. You have to note that Google may penalize sites that link to other sites with a completely different topic so choose with care. Avoid too many links in your site as well.
3. Write articles and submit them to article depositories. A very good way to improve your PR and exposure, and since you usually have an author's section (with a link to your site) and good article directories usually have a high PR The advantage is that this is a one-way link. If your articles are interesting or useful, other webmasters will use your article on their site (and with your author's signature), thus your exposure and inbound links will increase. Or perhaps you can try the Page Trade System By Webwobot. Although not technically article trading, you exchange relevant "information" between site owners.
4. Write reviews. Be it a book review, movie review, website review or even a webhost review in a forum, shopping site or even a support site. Make sure it's an honest review and subtly have your site's link in it too. Some sites, like blogs allow you to give comments on a particular topic or subject, and some may allow you to post the URL of your site too.
5. Site Content. Good unique content on your site will attract the attention of other webmasters who will then link to you. Content like useful howtos, tips & tricks and so on can really help your site get links. This is what is called "link baiting" by a lot of SEO professionals. And I think it's a correct term for it. It is without a doubt the best "tactic" to get inbound links. Nothing can beat that.
6. Post in forums. Choose forums you are interested in and have similar themes to your site. A lot of forums allow signatures and in those signatures you can link to your site. They also allow you to deeplink as well. A lot of experts in their fields are also active in forums, this way they get a lot of free advertisements and get other forumers to visit/link to their site. You can get good networking in those forums as well.
7. Join affiliates. Affiliates link to each other.
8. Freebies. Write a software or a script and distribute it for free or create a web template and allow users to download it for free or even start a contest for free. How about starting a non-profit project to help others? Although this can be considered as Site content, I think this should be in a separate topic by itself. The keyword here is FREE. And I am quite sure there will be webmasters who can�t resist to link to you.
9. Pay for that link. Sadly money makes the world( and that includes our beloved Internet) goes round. It could also get high PR sites to do one-way links to your site. Contact webmasters of these sites and request them to link to you by offering them compensation. If they aren't that keen, there is nothing like a few hundred (or thousand) greenbacks to make them change their mind.
10. Link your own sites together. If you have sites with similar topics or subjects, it would be wise to link them together.

Don't confuse Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and PR, they are not exactly the same. High PR alone will not get you more traffic, neither will it get you good ranking in search engine results. It just gives you a rough estimation of inbound links and whether there are authority sites linking to you. Think of PR as a webmaster credit and you as a webmaster, something to play with, and nothing more. I will not recommend you just to concentrate on improving your PR, you are better off practicing good SEO and write good content. However a high PR site will have the advantage of being more likely to be crawled by Google's spider(Googlebot) on it's crawl of the web than a site with low PR because of the number of incoming links.

Many people, even SEO experts mix up Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) and Page Rank. So if someone tells you to add h1 and h2 tags or use keywords in your description or to use anchor text to increase page rank, tell them it won't. But those tips will help in SEO and SERPs, not Page Rank, not directly anyway.