Should I do a very targeted backlink campaign?

i am walking on eggshells lately

[sandyeggo]

Are very targeted / related backlinks still worthwhile now, or is it possible that it will hurt us?
If I were to seek backlinks, I would make sure that they are absolutely related to our site, and that they had a decent pagerank. Any feedback before I get myself in trouble on this would be appreciated.
thanks

[justdave]

Backlinks will not hurt you as long as they seem 'natural.' Links to your site are always a good thing. I would just say if the site is related to your, don't worry too much about the PR. There are many low PR sites that place well in search engines.

[trillianjedi]

Are very targeted / related backlinks still worthwhile now, or is it possible that it will hurt us?

I would go as far as saying that it's almost inconceivable that on-topic backlinks will ever harm you, as long as they are "natural" and not site-wide forced anchor text etc.

The World Wide Web, fundamentally, is all about on-topic linking.

TJ

[birwin]

Forgive me if this is an ignorant question, but I do not know the definition of "natural" and "site-wide forced anchor text" is.

[bhartzer]

When someone talks about "natural" linking, they're talking about links to your site from other sites merely because you've got good content on your site--link that are not reciprocal in nature and links to your site that aren't paid links.

When someone talks about "site-wide forced anchor text" links they're talking about text links on just about every page of a website that purposely includes certain keywords just to get a better search engine ranking. (In other words, your site sells red widgets--and you get someone to put a link on every page of their site with the text "red widgets" that links to your site's home page.)

[sandyeggo]

Thanks very much for all of your input. I was only talking about normal links like you said, not a forced link that may have the appearance of spam. I will get to work on it. Cheers

[birwin]

bhartzer,

Thanks for the clarification. I understand now...