I think of it like this:
Who would I like to be associated with by google, what would be the best group of sites to be listed with if I had to pick 5 sites?
And I make sure that’s who I am thrown in a pot with.
When google follows my links, I want it to see sites like Casinomeister. Whatever sites I respect out there. Sites I wish I could have created.
I am not saying that you cannot get an advantage using linking schemes. But is it really necessary? Can you get a better advantage by doing something else?
I do agree with your friend, I think PR beyond 2 or 3 is for the birds. The only people paying you for PR are people buying links. For the majority of it’s existance G&C was PR4. I think it’s finally PR 5 now. Haven’t checked in a few months.
Google doesn’t even show your real PR. When G&C links to a site, more often than not it doesn’t even show in backlinks. Yet it has huge linking power due to the few link exchanges it does. Google cloaks it’s true link policy as best it can. What all goes into consideration is anybody’s guess.
I am not really saying links are not important, I think they probably are extremely important.
If you link to tons of mediocre or even bad sites, thats who you put yourself on a level with.
For starters, I won’t link to anyone who has a lot of outgoing links. I don’t want to be thrown in the same pot with them.
If you link to 100 people, and they each link to 100 people, you are in the same pot as the lot of them. Then how do you do any quality control?
I see it like what they say about AIDS, you sleep with everyone your partner has slept with.
Reading through the posts here makes me shudder, sounds like people are exchanging links with a bunch of crooks. Now, what does that say about your site? If they screw their link partners, are you really sure they don’t try to cheat google at every turn?