MSN Search  can be used to find topical links to help your site become more popular according to Tony Hill.

1) Start by going to http://search.msn.com.

2) Click on the “+Search Building” right below the search box.
Punch in your keyword , choose “exact match” and be sure to click the “Add to search” button.

3)Click on “Sites/Domain” from left menu and choose to exclude your site
Select “Results ranking” from the left menu. Then choose the “very popular” slider and slide that puppy all the way up.

Then start searching…

I tried this with "craftsman house plan" - I’m familiar with most of the house plans sites and know some of them personally - as well as particular problems with getting good links from other architectural firms (who are competitors).

Here was the command I used:

craftsman house plans -site:www.mascord.com {popl=100}

it seems to me that you don’t really need the search builder - you can just put the keywords and site in there you want to use.

I did find some sites that were new but most were familiar to me and while very on topic - would be next to impossible to get a link from.

But that brings up the issue of finding pages that are great to have a link from but that you’ll never be able to get a link.  One of my former clients is a collection of architects that formed a "consortium" to compete with the bigger sites.   The only problem is they also all competed against each other.  Each of the sites was an excellent source of back links for each other but I was unable to get them to see past their own professional rivalry with each other.

It turns out the best way to get links from the sites you really need them from is to give things away (a 50 dollar Starbucks gift certificate for example - might get you a good link from someone).  It turned out the consortium of architects was totally unimaginative about what they needed. 

I left the consortium to fight it up among themselves, instead, focusing on working with just one architect from the group - the most progressive and open minded one - and also one of the more successful of the group.   It’s no surprise to me that success, brains and insight go together.