i make sure that the page where my link is located is cached by google. what do you guys look for?

having the page where my link is located being cached is very important to me as well. i also make sure that the page isn't a link farm. more than 100 links per page.

I check to see if my link is among competitors. I don't mind the link being among those that compliment my service or product, but to have competitors listed defeats the purpose of the link exchange, IMHO.

I look at the page rank of the page in question. I see no benefit giving available space to link exchange partners which give no credit back for page rank.

page rank is over rated. i make sure the the page is cachable and when the last time it was cached. i also make sure that the page doesn't have over 100 links on it; better if only 50 or less.

__________________
Need Outsource Projects? Have Freelance Programmers bid on ALL your Custom Web Design projects today at FreelancerStore.com

Never do link exchange with pages which have extension as .php or .asp , or like any dynamic page

One good embedded link--that is one surrounded by content it is integrated into--is worth 1000 links-for-the-sake-of-it. I look for pages that genuinely endorse a link to a readership.

I make sure no more then 10 links are on the page, on high pr sites, 15 max. Also I make sure theres a fair amount of backlinks to there website and I check to see if the age is 6months+ sometimes as well.

and also make sure that the page is not link farm and does not do the exchnage automatically