Do outbound links matter?

[casper434]

The value of inbound links is clear but do the number of outbound links matter when it comes to SEO and search engine rankings?

[AlanMosley]

This has not been made clear, but Matt Cutts from google has stated it can help if you link out to relevant authortive sites.

but linking out leaks Link Juice, but the best i can understand from Matts commentts is that if the sites are relevant enouth and of good authority, the gain will outweigh the loss.

There is also an argumment about sites that do not link out at ll, as not being inclueded in PR calculations, so i would suggest at least one outlink.

A page with 100 LJ, and has a outlink, is giving away 100 to that site, but if you have 9 internal links on the page also, you ae only giving out 10 and keeping 90, there is also a bit of a skew on that as the first link carries more weight, and also where the link is in the page counts, the main content area carries the most wiegth.

Also consider the page you are linking out from, if it is a low rankking page, you are probably not giving away much
dont link to spam sites, that will hurt.

This page will help a lot, but please disreagard the bit about in links cant hurt you, that is old info.

http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html

[Sebes]

The number doesn't matter as much as the quality of the pages you link to. Linking to relevant content your visitor probably wants to know about helps you:

first by showing google that you know what the authorities in your business are.Secondly by increasing users time on site and reducing your bounce rate, both of wich are (or will be) ranking signals. Lastly by giving your visitors a good experience on your page, thus building your brand.

The best pages to link to would be non-competing, supplemental information or "cool" stuff.

[EGOL]

Let's imagine that you have three websites with identical articles - which are of very high quality...

Website A does not link out

Website B links out to a few trashy articles per page

Website C links out to articles on other websites that do a superior job of explaining a subtopic

Which one of these sites serves the visitor the best?  Which one is most likely to receive links?  Which one would you prefer?

Search engines should answer the same as you do.

[AlanMosley]

well put mate

[casper434]

excellent points. thanks very much for the inputs