"I don't think "link farming" is worthwhile just because of google
PR. I'd rather spend time creating more content than mailing a bunch of people trying to get links, I just don't think it's the most efficient use of time at all".
Link farming is often connected with spam.
If you want to maximize your company's / sites (short time) profit, there must be a optimum division of your time between bulding content and getting inbound links. Getting (more) inbound links may even be the most important thing on your to do list since there is a correlation between, ranking (in the Google index) and visitors to your site.
Correlation measueres linear relationships, and is neither a necessary not sufficient condition for causality
KW search:
Granger causality
sims causality
E.G.
http://ideas.repec.org/a/ecm/emetrp/...i3p569-81.html
If the pagerank of your site is m, I think you shall concentrate on getting inbound links from sites with pagerank n where n >= m.
If your goal is not to maximize your company's profit, the result is different.
Digression (example my own sites):
If you look at my sites in a small, screen 15 inches or less, they will not function. If you use text size above normal, the same thing happens.
Reason:
The sites are primarily finance related and people working in finance often use 21 inches screens. Few use screens less than 17 inches as far as I know.
Future:
But with the increasing use of mobile media, optimizing for smaller screens may be very important.
http://www.polymervision.com/