As a general rule, get linked from websites within your particular discipline. This is important for two reasons:
1. The more people see you linked to within a particular discipline, the more impressed they are likely to be, as Web linking is akin to word-of-mouth. If people see links to you on lots of other websites, that’s a major credibility builder.
2. Search engines like to find logical patterns and groupings for links, and tend to reward you if you are well linked in a particular pattern once the person is searching for a keyword related to that pattern. (This is not always the case, however, as we will see below at “Strengthen your weak ties.”)