Search Engine Optimization is best explained through a real life scenario. Would you park your car and leave it unlocked in a questionable neighborhood? I’m guessing the answer is no. For many reasons you would think twice about where you would leave your vehicle and how secure it is.
 
Naturally, your best bet would be to park in a safe neighborhood, a concept Linda Palecek talks about as it pertains to Web sites in her Power of Association blog post.

The power of linking is incredibly valuable. Inbound links from a business partner’s Web site have the power to boost your site’s page rank. You can also return the favor by linking to their site – a client testimonial posted on their Web site or blog can both serve as a legitimate reference for a prospective reader and will also be seen favorably by the search engines. SEOMoz even suggests asking customers to link to your URL on correspondence such as invoices.
 
Like parking your car in that dimly lit neighborhood, you want to be certain the site you are linking to is legitimate and indexed by the major search engines. A number of credible blogs in the industry have found Bad-Neighborhood.com to be a good resource to scan a Web site before linking to it.
 
You also want to avoid linking to a “Link Farm” or a “Spamdex.” These are Web sites that solely hyperlink to other sites with pages consisting of only lists of Web sites and the Search Engines nearly always penalize Link Farms as soon as they find them. While you certainly can’t control what others link to, be aware whom you link to. You wouldn’t want to devastate your ranking on search engines because of a Web site’s questionable content.

Sam Chagani