Warning - avoid bogus links with PHP and/or CGI redirects slash hijacking - you could get dinged for duplicate content by search engine filters.

Tip: Before you link to a site find the page you think your link will go on and "view source". Find another link and look for that domain in the source code. Analyze the code to see if it is a standard HTML link ie <a href="http://www.onlinedirectoryguide.com">ODG</a>

If it doesn't look something like that you may be wasting your time exchanging links.

Warning: RUN FAST if a link has syntax that looks something like this:

<a href="http://www.webmasterschannel.com/cgi-bin/directory/go.pl?id=1716" target="_blank"><b>Loopsound.com</b></a>
< sup class="popular">pop</sup>
< div>Loopsound is a production music and sound library with 1000's of royalty free music loops, drum loops and sound effects for multimedia webmasters and games developers.</div>
< small class="green">http://www.loopsound.com - <a href="http://www.webmasterschannel.com/info/1716.html" class="small">more info</a> - <a href="http://www.webmasterschannel.com/cgi-bin/directory/rate.pl?ID=1716" class="small">rate it</a></small>

It isn't a direct link to the domain loopsound.com, but rather a redirect from a cgi script that uses the web sites own URL. Not what I call SEO friendly linking. Yes - I know - they do it for tracking purposes. It does no good for Link Popularity as the search engines never see the link to loopsound.com

You may get a few clicks traffic wise, but don't count on it helping your rankings or link popularity - in fact it may hurt you with a 'duplicate content" ding, as their URL will get indexed and it will point at the same content on your page.

I don't know about you, but that isn't something I'd like to be a part of. Problem is - many directories are doing this kind of thing. It is very common. And some even purport to be helping with your link popularity.

So take a moment and review the source code. It's better to be safe than sorry!

Happy linking!