Check your page rank here:
Page Rank
It is showing as 0/10 across the datacentres, so google is aware of your site, it just doesn't think it has more than 0 value - yet!
You have to give it time, the last
PR update occurred at the start of August, it will be another 3 months before you will notice any change, so forget about it for now and concentrate on optimising ALL your pages.
You need RELEVANT keyword and description META tags on ALL your pages, DO NOT put an inaccurate description and DO NOT use keywords that don't appear in that pages content.
Link exchanges are a bit of a grey area, if you think it may be bad, then avoid it. Concentrate on gaining genuine links (one-way links are much better than reciprocal). Optimisation takes time, and it can be months before you will see genuine results, stick with it, and be patient.