Another major way of increasing link popularity is through press releases. If your press releases were to pick up by major news media, it would definitely boost your site not only in terms of link popularity but also the credibility and recognition gained in the eyes of the surfers. And nowadays many sites offers free press release services and one of them is prweb.com
What I did was make my own link exchange. People come to me and they put a link on their site and I put one on mine.
Check out my site!
Your linking strategy articles are very helpful for small businesses like mine.
Links exchange is both powerful and tricky technique - it can build up your site's traffic and it can make ruin all your hard efforts. Rule of thumb is to exchange links with sites that are relevant to your site's content and are "good quality sites". Never exchange links solely for search engines rankings - you are at risk to loose your positions at once and for a long time, because search engines get more and more smart in recognizing artificial linking techniques.