Trading relevant links, if done properly,  can be one of the simplest and most effective ways of encouraging traffic to your website and increase your search engine ranking. However, the search engines will identify and ignore most 'link pages'. And in some cases, your site will be penalized because it appears to be full of irrelevant links (link spamming).  

A couple notes on link trading to make the most of our efforts.  

1.  Your link page should not be called 'links' and should not have the word link on the page or in the title. It should be called 'partners' or 'resources'.

2.  The resources page must be easily accessible from the home page, via a text link. If the link is in a dropdown menu or image (button) it is not sufficient. The best practice is to put a text link at the bottom of your site, in the footer.

3.  On your resources page, dont just link the website. The link should be on a couple descriptive words about your business. With a longer descriptive and any other info below.  

4.  Use a 'header' style, such as H2 or H3 on your linked title. Browsers and search engines recognise this styled text as of higher importance then other content on the page. If you dont use header styles, then at least bold the title to attract the eye of end users and encourage click-throughs.

Example...

GUImedia - Vancouver Web Design and Development

The html looks like this ...

<H3><a href="http://guimedia.ca">GUImedia - Vancouver Web Design and Development</a></H3></br>
Guimedia provides a full range of website services from hosting and domain acquisition to creative, uniques design and custom programming.