The website needs to be SEO'd (search engine optimized). Meaning it helps it to get listed on search engines without buying adwords. Looks like you don't have any keywords (meta tags) in your pages? Also a page that states what you do for the front page, rather then that of just pictures. Almost like a well written page that would incorporate keywords along with a business story. Web spiders look at websites and pic out stuff and gathters the information and sends it back the search engines. If you don't have the info easy for them to gather then you get looked over. Another thing is naming pictures correctly (as what the picture is, not just a file out of a camera), this helps if people are looking for a picture of that item, ei:google images.
One thing that is alomost certain, the products you're trying to sell have keywords, and your competiters are probably buying hits through the search engines (which are known as adwords).
Hope this helps a bit, but it gets even more complicated then this.
Oh, and link trades help with traffic to your site. Just because they are up on a site doesn't mean you'll be rated higher on a search engine. I am about to launch my parents new site, updated with an oscommerce cart, we can trade links. Here is their current site www.southcoaststainless.com