These days i am exchanging links on this forum. While exchanging link somebody told me that i don't have the "link page" linked with home page. Is there any harm in SEO, to put the link of the "link page" in home page ?
I hope you're exchanging links with "relevant" sites... or we might just see you back here in a couple of months crying about how you were on page 1 or 2 and now you're nowhere to be found in the SERPs because you've been penalized. Put it on your home page for the world to see... Links pages are so 1998. If I were going to exchange links I would ONLY exchange with relevant sites and I would NOT list all of the links on page called links.html or resources.html. But why exchange links at all when you can submit articles, find dofollow blogs to comment on, submit to relevant directories, post links on forums, etc. to "farm" your own links?
I'm guessing he was linking to it from some other page on his site... so it wouldn't be obvious that he had one... just guessing though.
Yes, there are some link pages are filled with lots of links, just like a link farm. Getting backlinks from those pages will do harm to your site. It is known as blackhat way. Do not get links from those link farm, Actually google hates it a lot. If there are only very few links, that is fine, but if there are more OR if there will be more on future, it is better to stay away.
No problem. But, each page must be link from at least 1 page. And it must be include in the Google xml sitemap. If the link page have a link from home page, in future link page also gets PR. If not, the chances should be very less.
If you aren't sure or have doubts, always use the absolute url. Typing in the full address will allow the link to work no matter where it is located on the Internet.
There's no harm in putting them on your homepage because they will carry more weight and link power to the other site. If you have tons of links doing that, and none linking to you, then you are getting cut short.