Having A Links Page For SEO

Modern SEO is now becoming more dependant on links. To get links you are more than likely going to have to link to people first. This is why you should consider making a links page (anchor text ordered alphabetically) so you can keep track of all your links and allow you to easily add websites that you find useful to this page. You should have no more than 20 out-going links per page and every link on your site should be checked about every 2 months, just to make sure they are not bringing back errors such as 404’s.
Link pages are also very useful for reciprocal link exchanges. When contacting another webmaster you can tell them you have added there link to your links page and then ask them if it is possible for them to link to your site.
Links pages have the potential to have a very high pagerank. This is because they have a lot of useful external relevant links. It shows Google that you are being social and recognize that you know your competitors and respect there content. Don’t link to every competitor. You should choose a select few, the ones you find are most useful.
Webmasters are normally going to be trying to get there homepage to rank well or other content sites. I can’t think of a time when they are going to try and optimize there links page to be found. By adding most links to your links pages you will increase the weight of your internal links to your pages and spread the pagerank between your internal pages more than your competitors. Your competitors will only gain the backlink juice from your links page.
Having a links page is great. Not only for SEO, but it allows you to keep track of what you are linking too.