I don't think link exchange can help you a lot to get better ranking. I do know that getting one way link for strong sites will definitely a huge help for your site to get better ranking and SERP positioning.
so as a professional SEO company, you are suggesting that google pays more importance to links gained thru link exchanges? so pathetic as you can see, google discounts such links and link exchanges just dont work anymore. SOURCE
Google's Caffeine update is just around the corner waiting to be made, that is the new thing in seo at this time. You can read the factors that caffeine update will take into account from here: http://jazzou.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=211&Itemid=40 (note: this is not my website, i just came across it)
Hi there, I think blog commenting is also a big source of getting back links. Video sharing is also a very good idea of collecting traffic and getting back links because they have their own huge traffic.
Recent update in google is "real time search" feature.. It shows updates from twitter, friendfeed etc.. you can find term "Updates" under "All results" in "Show options". It helps to give information that updated seconds ago..