The Internet is built on links. One site links to another site which links to another site – this gives it a weblike structure. And search engines like Google have figured out that an excellent way to determine which sites are relevant is to see how many links are tracked to it.

The more your site has,the more likely it is that people consider it important.

One of the best ways to collect links to your site is to link to the sites of other people – this is called reciprocal linking. It's even better if yours make you money. Amazon and other retail websites have an affiliate program: you place links on your site to books and other items on their sites that your customers might be interested in. When your customers click on these links to purchase items, you get a commission from it.

But you might just want to offer them on your website to help your customers find things they are interested in. Links, unfortunately, are the best way to lose traffic and potential customers; people click away and then can't find you again.

To prevent this, set up your links in HTML so that they create a popup window instead of opening in your website; this way, your customer can very easily return to your website.

The more intelligent linking you can do with other websites, and the more links you can get them to attach to your website, the more likely your site will be placed high in search engine results. And if you have really good links, your customers will be more likely to come back to your website again and again.