This reinforces what we preach to our clients -- that starting a conversation through your website with others increases your site's readership. Starting this conversation, at least one that's not entirely one-sided, can be hard, especially for people with little blog experience.  One piece of advice we typically give is to not just link to sites on the same topic but to cite them and write about what they're talking about and add an opinion. Everyone, especially bloggers, likes a shout out. Flattery goes a long way and criticism can go even further (constructive ideally, but if you're just going for numbers...). This way you'll be more likely to start a real dialog, and get a link back.

So thanks Dane and Tristan for this!