what determines page rank..is it how many backlinks that you have
or the revelant links you have...

The only thing that effects PR is backlinks and the PR of the pages on which those backlinks are located.

What st0x said. It's a recursive formula.

It also doesn't determine search engine rank...so don't confuse the two.

Jim, I'll echo what's been said. The PR of a page is basically a measure of the PR of the pages linking to that page. That's a very simplified explanation. If you search a little for "PageRank formula" or "PR explained" or something similar you should find some articles explaining the formula as it was known at the time of the article.

But don't confuse PageRank (PR) with the rank of a page. The Page in PageRank is actually named after Larry Page and not a web page. PR is one among many factors in where a page ranks for a particular query.

PageRank isn't worth being concerned about. My home page has the same PR no matter what, but ranks differently depending on what you type into the search box. That's what really matters as far as the SE part of SEO is concerned; scoring well for keywords that are important to your business. The ultimate goal is probably to sell something, so you want keywords a person who's almost ready to buy your product will be searching for.

PR = number of links to a page, the PR of the pages those links come from, and the number of links on those pages. If you get a link on a PR 15 page with thousands of external links, it won't be worth much at all.

PR tends to be the side effect of a good or popular or successful site, not the other way around. Things like using a good template, publishing useful content, using images that capture the user's attention, and so on, will all wind up helping your PR indirectly in the long run, because they'll make more people want to recommend your site, by linking to it.

how many quality backlinks your site has.. i think that's it.

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))

In layman's terms PR(A) is the Pagerank boost your page A will get after being linked from someone else's site (t1). PR(t1) is the pagerank of the page which links to you and C(t1) is the amount of total links that (t1) has.
D= Damping Factor/Voting Power
It is important to know that a pages voting power is only .85 of that pages actual PR and this voting power gets spread out evenly between all sites it links to.


Hope u got some idea....

PR doesn't account for relevancy. Relevancy is one of the factors that decide your SERP, along with PR.

Originally Posted by links4u

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))

C(t1) is the amount of total links that (t1) has.

It is important to know that a pages voting power is only .85 of that pages actual PR and this voting power gets spread out evenly between all sites it links to.

I've added some emphasis to point out what seems to get overlooked left and right. If people are going to care about page rank, they should know that the number of links on the page linking to you has a big effect.

And if you care about seo instead of pr, you already know that a page with 300 links, one of them to your site, isn't helpful unless your one link is styled very differently to stand out from the rest.

I agree with all posts and will add little on nofollow link.
Someone talk about that robots not crawl this link at all, but actually they do.
(good example is wikipedia ,you can have backlink from wikipedia in google webmaster tools)
It's add up your baklink in google webmaster tools but not send pagerank.

the number of your IBLs

As was pointed out, PageRank is determined from a mathematical formula, but it's not the only thing to consider when link building. Link relevance, text, and other features of the site/page linking to you are also important.