Rather than creating a bogus link directory and filling it with 25,000 links, link to partners with pages that are actually indexed by search engines and have page rank. Additionally, ask them for inbound links from their pages that are indexed and have page rank. Both of you will gain more from this exchange.

There are two major ways in which you can use links. You can use them to improve your natural search engine rankings. You can do this through reciprocal link exchanges, triangular link exchanges, and viral techniques that get your links on sites. You can also purchase links on other sites or exchange links to get traffic.

While Google claims that your competititors cannot negatively affect your search engine ranking positions, there is considerable evidence to the contrary. Some unscrupulous webmasters will use a technique called 'Google bowling' which involves sending an unnatural amount of links to your site to knock out of a good position. If this happens, contact Google directly with a petition.

Always avoid bad linking neighborhoods when working on a link exchange campaign. In general, if the site contains spam content (i.e. generated content), too many links per page, or a massive, irrelevant link directory, it might be part of a bad neighborhood. Setting up a reciprocal exchange with such a site could get your site de-indexed or at least penalized.

Exchanging links with other webmasters to increase your page rank is an excellent way to build an asset that you will later be able to sell or to use to generate revenue. Simply creating a high page rank site qualifies as an 'asset', which other webmasters will be interested in purchasing or at least purchasing links from it.

If you have a high page rank, but little traffic, you can use that to barter link exchanges with sites that have a lot of traffic, but need better links, so they can switch over to receiving more natural search engine traffic. The best way in which you can do this is to seek out webmasters who own low PR sites with low alexa ratings.

The real purpose of a link directory is not to slam random links into a page, so you can make exchanges with every site on the Internet. Instead, it should be to provide an actual real, useful resource for your site visitors. If you create your directory with this in mind, it will help you improve your search engine rankings. Otherwise, it may get you banned.

If you have an usually low alexa ranking (i.e. a lot of traffic), but a low page rank, you can leverage your alexa rating to get high page rank links. You can do this by contacting webmasters will reciprocal link exchange offers and you can explain to them that they will get actual traffic by linking to you, rather than page rank.