Link trading, sometimes called reciprocal linking is a web promotion strategy used by webmasters and site owners to increase qualified traffic to their sites.   Webmasters search the Internet for other websites that have the same type of visitors and contact those site owners by email requesting a link trade.   If a site owner agrees to the trade, they then link to each other's websites in order to share traffic.

Search Engines Don't Actually Search the Web:  Most search engines create a date base by examining only the web sites submitted to them.   They search each submitted web site and add data to their own computer files based on what they find on the submitted sites.  (Some search engines, such as Google use a slightly different approach)    Technically, the process is called spidering.   

So when you go to a web directory and type in a word such as "Wedding officiant" and then click search, the search engines don't actually go out onto the web looking for anything.   They merely search their own data base.   

So, if you have not submitted your web site to that search engine and your web site has  not been spidered, no resultant data is in their data base.  You  can search all day and you'll never be found.  

You can have the world's greatest web site, but unless  you have some connection to other web sites or are listed in some search engine data bases, your presence on the Internet is invisible.

Some (Not Very) Technical Stuff:  

.

.

.

Priority listings:  One of the factors that places a web site higher up in some of the search engine lists is the number of links it has to and from other web sites.   Every major search engine uses link analysis as part of their ranking algorithms.    So setting up a reciprocal links page and linking with other web sites will help you to get a better listing position in the search engines.   The more relevant links you have, the more traffic you have, so the more relevant links the better.

Appropriate links:  Be sure that the sites you link to are appropriate for your website.  Search engine link analysis is not about getting lots of links from just  anywhere.    It's about getting links from good web pages that are related to the topics for which you want to be found.

For example linking a fishing gear web site to a knitting circle web site would not be appropriate.   For example, on our web site offering  Wedding services we direct our attention  to a specific audience.   Be particularly sensitive if you are dealing in adults products.