A problem some people have is identifying quality, relevant sites to partner with. There are many solutions that you can do to get around this. One solution is to use the Google Directory. The Google Directory is DMOZ but it is sorted by PageRank.
The Google Directory is helpful in many ways. #1 – it groups sites into nice categories and #2 it ranks them according to PageRank (aka link power). So Search for your keyword and see what categories pop up (you may want to search on dmoz for this, the google search is not very good displaying categories).
In the search results you will probably see an exact category match and a few others. If you go after sites that are listed in your exact category you will probably be contacting competitors and they are normally not very friendly when receiving link requests. However if you go after the others that partial match your keyword you will probably see that they are relevant.
Also these are sites that understand Internet marketing since they needed to submit to DMOZ to be in the Google directory. If they were smart enough to submit to DMOZ they hopefully will be smart enough to see that a content & link exchange would benefit both of you. Happy hunting.
[tags]link partners, link development, google directory, dmoz, link exchange[/tags]
