Links are the lifeblood of any site, and with some search engines using link popularity as part of their ranking procedure, it's in your interest to encourage people to link to your site.

Reciprocal links These are easy: link to sites similar to your own and drop them a polite line asking if they'd like to return the favour. In most cases, you'll be successful, but don't expect to be so lucky when linking to sites far busier than yours or ones owned by large companies.

Bear in mind that other sites won't be impressed if they're only one of hundreds of links thrown together on an ugly page on your site: the more time and effort you put in to making your links page the more likely they are to take you seriously. You can check who's linking to your site in most of the major search engines by typing "link:http://www.yoursite.com/index.html" in the search box.

Web rings/banner exchanges Usually of far more benefit to the instigator of the program, web rings bundle together related sites, usually by means of a horrid interface that's almost guaranteed to consign your pages into the 'hopeful amateur' category.

Banner exchanges do much the same thing, except you get thumping great banners on your page. With very few exceptions, I'd ignore them and concentrate on getting listed in the major search engines instead.

Although the thought of all that filthy lucre just for sticking some ads on your page may be attractive, it's worth balancing it out with the detrimental effects on download speed, site appearance and, of course, the traffic rate: if someone sees a tempting advert for a better looking site, they'll be gone!