Link exchange
Linkexchange is actually something that could potentially help you. The searchengines do in fact count the number of web sites that have links to your website.
Notall links are equal. A single link from a highly popular website can be worthmore than a thousand linsk from an obscure website.
Andthere are links that actually hurt you. The search engines do a very good jobof identifying “link farms” (sites that specialize in selling links). If yourwebsite starts appearing in multiple link farms then the search engines willconsider your site to be spam and will actually downgrade your listing or evenban your site from their search engine.
Itdoes make sense to trade links with others who have compatible websites.Sending out spam e-mails asking for link exchanges are going to be ignored, butyou can ask others in person if they might be interested in a link exchange.
Dobe careful to avoid setting up a link exchange hoax. There are groups thatcreate websites that link to each other just for the purpose of fooling thesearch engines into thinking that all of the sites in the group are popular.The search engines can identify this hoax very easily and often ban all of theparticipating websites from their search engine.
Andas strange as it may sound, adding one or two really good out-going links (evenif they aren’t reciprocated) can help your search engine placement. The searchengines will realize that you have quality out-going links and assume that therest of your material is also high quality and give you a slight boost inranking.