This article addresses the design problem of selecting an appropriate relay in amplify-and-forward (AF) cooperative diversity systems. In this regard, this article focuses on relay selection based on partial channel knowledge only across the source and relay links. In particular, the two fundamental questions will be answered, that is, whether to cooperate and whom to cooperate with. Through answering these two questions, an improved relay selection strategy based on partial relay link, which emphasizes that cooperation happens when necessary, is proposed to aim at maximizing the average mutual information. Then a joint optimization, in terms of power allocation and relay selection, is employed to guarantee a robust performance for relay selection based on partial relay link. Optimum power is allocated between the source and the selected relay to maximize the output signal-to-noise (SNR) at the destination. Simulation results turn out that the improved scheme can achieve better performance than previous work and the robust performance can be guaranteed by employing joint optimization.