It has been traditionally popular to have a page full of links on websites. You'll still find them today with some of the most popular sites on the web-both commercial and user content sites feature them. It has long been considered the quickest way to increase your search engine ranking and likelihood of appearing high on the results list. By featuring a link to a major site you can get traffic to 'accidentally' come to you.

There are a few things to note on this practice. Firstly, search engine providers are aware that this method has been exploited and is now seen as a way to optimize search engine ranking, rather than as a legitimate sharing of great websites. Because of this, they are beginning to look further and websites that have a lot of links gathered together in the one place, or who have links that are in no way related to the website content are being removed.

If this happens to you, it'll mean you website will never appear in results and you'll have a major source of new traffic completely removed from your arsenal. This can be catastrophic to commercial websites, so it is not a mistake you want to make. Be wary of website designers who encourage this practice and want to include features like this in your website.

Make sure you keep relevance as the key motivator for adding links. While you may not be able to stop anyone else linking to you-and indeed this may work in your favor sometimes-if you intend to carry links on your website plan smartly and make sure the design is based on giving consumers and visitors more, and not on what you may get out of it when it comes to searches.

If you spread your links out - don't add them all onto one page or multiples of pages - and keep them relevant to the rest of the information on the page then you'll be unlikely to suffer if a search engine operator decides it's time to update their programming and acceptance of links.