All links are created equal?

1) I think the same way you do but I have heard it is important the link partners has much unique content and not just page rank. I would exchange links with a PR 0 site if it had good content.

2) I don’t know, perhaps both is good. One place for good reciprocal links and one for less valuable ones.

The only issue with PR0 sites is if they have been banned by Google. Check to to see that their site comes up when you type in the domain name, if not, they might have a penalty. Linking out to sites with penalties (bad neighbors) is not good for your site.

PR is cumulative, so linking to lower PR sites is not a bad thing, people generally search out higher PR sites to link with since they provide much more benefit to you. A single PR5 page pointing to your site theoretically provides about as much benefit as 500+ PR1 pages pointing to your site.

Lastly, kwblue has a good point. Those sites that have good content and are pursuing a linking campaign won’t remain PR0 sites for long and you will likely get longer term benefits from them.

Much of it depends on your goals too, in terms of which search engine you want to do well in. And there are also exceptions to all rules. I don’t mean to be cryptic, but I don’t think there’s ONE right answer to how you should go about your linking strategy.

My personal line of thinking nowadays is to do what’s good for the user and let the search engines worry about the ranking stuff. If I build a useful site with unique content that links to other quality resources of interest to my user, and I don’t rank well, then that’s the search engine’s mistake, not mine. I didn’t always think that way, but I think it’s a good way to go nowadays.