Search engine ranking / linking to other sites

[neil]

I heard somewhere that linking to other sites can improve your ranking in some search engines, if you end passing on a lot of traffic to other sites because the search engine recognises the page as more important?

is this true or have I got the wrong end of the stick,

any other 'tricks' to improve ranking would be most appreciated :)

thanks Neil

[DaveSW]

Not just linking to other sites, getting them to link back to you is the vital part. every link to you counts as a 'vote' for your page.

Other than that, keywords in the page title tag, not using frames, proper use of heading elements...

[neil]

proper use of header elements - do you mean using the meta/decription tags correctly etc?

I understand getting sites to link back to you, but what about linking to other sites where its unlikely you will be able to encourage the webmaster to link back to you?

(e.g. if the site is a large corporate brand)

[iniquity101]

http://www.dmoz.org/add.html

[DaveSW]

Yes, like iniquity101 suggests, directories are a good source of links.

By header elements I mean <h1> etc. title tags. Very important to google.