Most links pages are defective!  

The worst ones can have nine near fatal flaws.  

How does yours stack up?

As a veteran link exchanger I’ve spent countless hours in front
of my monitor. Like a Vegas slots player hoping to hit the 
jackpot, err, I meant to say looking for prime candidates. So 
I qualify to spell out fatal flaws all too many links pages
suffer from.  

Make it Easy to Connect the Dots
By that I mean make it easy to trade links. Would it kill you 
to put instructions right on your links page? Or at least link
to the add URL page?

Along the same lines:

Tell Me What You Want
Do us both a favor and supply your link text. Both what it 
looks like and the HTML version to cut and paste.  

Yeah, I can pull it from the links page I found you on. But
why make me work? 

Don’t Treat Contact Info Like Buried Treasure
You’d think some webmasters were in the witness protection 
program they make it so hard to find where to email. Put which
email address to use or the link to your contact page in plain
view.  

Do I Qualify?  
Don’t make me guess. List any qualifying criteria you have. 
For instance if you’ll only trade links with certain types of 
sites or the links page must have so much PR - say so.  

Be a Specialist
Avoid trying to be all things to all people. Doesn’t bring you
targeted traffic. Doesn’t send such link partners targeted 
traffic. Trade links with like minded sites and all will be 
better off. 

Use Categories
Set up your links page to be truly useful rather than like a 
ball lost in tall weeds.  In other words don’t just throw up a 
laundry list of listings. My eyes glaze over when I see a long
unorganized roster of 63 sites. Who’s gonna sift through that
to find what they need?  

This Ain’t No Yellow Pages
Avoid a multi-page directory. Why? It costs PR for each level
down you go.  

You see if your directory page is a PR 5, each links page in 
another folder will at best be a PR 4.  

So it’s better to have an index on the same page as all the 
links. Ideally with internal page jumps that take visitors to 
the appropriate category. With another back to the top. Here’s 
help with that: http://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutors/pagejump.html

Don’t Pass Go or 100 Links Per Page
The googlebot gets tired.  100 links on a page is all it will 
follow. Be fair. Don’t shortchange anyone by exceeding that.  

As you approach 65 links create a second links page. Just be
sure to put the link to that on all your pages too.  So you’re
distributing PR to any subsequent links pages just as you did
for the first one.

Let Me Know
Just like some guys don’t call after the first date, some 
webmasters never reply to a link exchange request.  Was it 
something I said?  

We’re ALL busy.  Please give all link inquiries THAT QUALIFY 
the courtesy of a reply.  Or else say on your links page 
you’re no longer trading links.  

Any questions? What’s that? Do I practice what I preach? Check
it out:   http://www.traffic-test-tube.com/traffic-team.html