Google's guidelines and seomoz toolbar indicate that anything over 100 links is to much. But if you check out very well known sites , there internal linking structure is over 300 (take amazon for an example). That is 1 of over 200 factors for ranking. If its helpful for the user experience leave it , if its not get rid of it.

I guess a good "trick" in my opinion would be to create a contest and promote it through image sharing sites like pinterest, tumblr, or youtube , facebook and any other social site or method you can get traffic from with an attention grabbing image * reshare to win * and stating the contest as a search a term contest (no link at all) to check out the prizes .Freebies always seem to drive crazy traffic, why not use it to your advantage as a influence on search suggest.

Another influence I use to build brand awareness and in a way search suggest is stating the company/website name (semi emd though) instead of a link.

I think that some people don't seem to get the methodology of Seo, creating virality and building a brand. It has to stand out from classic onpage optimisation and offpage link building. THINK OUT OF THE BOX.

The one thing that gave me an edge as a marketer in my industry when I first started on ( a revenue sharing site ) was a variation of a industry keyword that I built up from >10 searches monthly up to 4400 exact match searches monthly (singular phrase) and 1300 exact match (plural) the long tail is even more in less than 9 months by posting about recommendations for those products in industry relative forums building up in a way my "own" keyword .