Well in looking at your site I noticed it barely loads up.
Before you even think about linking we need to get you past this slowness in loading.
I saw the other sight you were doing and honestly it was not that bad and you could make that sight perform more to your needs I would think simply because it is a small sight and if your server is slow you will need a simple static html site to get you started.
O am assuming you finished the site.
If it is not the loading you have no image map or simply haven't started.
If you are going to use a larger sight there is going to be some more serious design involved and you will need to pay special attention to the size of every file against your server bandwidth speeds.
Adjust as needed to get your page to load on average within about 20 seconds max and thats going to be on dial up because lots of people still use it believe it or not, I stress this because people just wont wait any longer as a rule.
Once you do get to this point then you can worry about anchor text and links.
Listen what you really need to focus on first it going to be content rich unique copyright for your site then research meta and write tags for every page of your site and name every link on your site map something pertaining to the keywords your going after if possible.
Then do anchor text, H2 Tags on each page then submissions are next at this point you start doing your link building but remember it is very important that your site be built with the optimization in mind.
You can build informational sites rich in content and then take into consideration that your industry is super competitive and considering what you have stated and what we are seeing you would be hard pressed not to have help with this project if you want it done correctly without spending you life savings to make it happen.
I would be more then happy to look at the template and see if we cant salvage it and put together a good program to get you the keyword rankings that you are looking for.
I got to tell you though there is no magic way to make it happen it will take work and time to get it done and there are absolutely no corners that can be cut to really get what your looking for from this.