When you are building links to increase your website popularity, whom do you link to? The question of where to link to increase ranking can be confusing. Logical thinking is needed to achieve link popularity in a natural way. Yes, indeed, Google page rank should come first and foremost. Page rank is part of the algorithm of Google’s ranking in the search engine results. Other search engines use link popularity in their algorithm to evaluate your website as well. But page rank is only one of the 100 plus criteria Google uses to evaluate your web pages. Use the idea of page rank as a “tool” to help make decisions, there’s no need to live and die by the results. Link popularity itself is merely one-way to improve your ranking.
In fact, there is a general fear of reciprocal linking to websites who inadvertently link to a “bad neighborhood” with penalties or page rank zero, passing on problems to you. Use your common sense. Is this a website you would want to visit or your visitors would want to visit? If the answer is no or you can’t tell what the subject of the site is, make a note of it and keep looking. A website full of links...