Exchanging links is still the best way for search engines to find you.

The way most search engines rank your site depends on 2 major factors. How relevant your site is:

The relevance of your site is basically how your content reflects the keywords that your site is focused on.

and how many other sites link to you. Both of these factors are not impossible to achieve.

Links to you, are how many other web pages out there that have links to your site. The more sites that link to you the higher your ranking will be.