I have been using this method for a while for some of my other sites. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=241362 (copy what the competition are doing). However, there is one thing that has been puzzling me. A lot of the link request forms to get a link on the same site as the competition ask for you to ensure that you have a reciprocal, but (as far as I can see) the competiion does not have a links page or any hidden page with a reciprocal link. How are they doing it? thanks!
Could be they are using a hidden backlink page, one that either has no links to it from their main site or a link that is buried/hidden from casual visitors. Let's say it was on supersite.com/topsecretlinks.html - that page might not be linked anywhere easy to find but they could submit it and the recip page would confirm a link there. Smarter backlink systems will want to see the link on intro page to your site or on a links.html page and will confirm it is there every few days.
I thought that, but even if the page is not linked to within the site, it is in on the directory when google crawls so it should appear on google results if you search through the reciprocals for the other site....i've come accross it again today, very wierd!