How is everyones pr on google? Right now mine stinks

Someone told me to make a links page or link to as many sites as possible, but they also say that if the site does not rank higher than mine do not link because it will only hurt me.
Anybody have thoughts on this??
I also need to optimise my site, meta tags and key words, found this site
www.prosubmitinc.com , would this be good?? your thoughts please.
Thanks in advance