Any Effect From Little to no External Links?

[motiv8]

The site I am working on has barely any links linking outwardly, being a fairly niche site it is hard to imagine many relevant places to link to. By not linking out, can this lead to problems in Google's eyes, I guess it would be good from the point of view of inward links & their dilution but is there anything related to looking strange on Google's link graph in this way?

[Chris.Menke]

If your niche is so small as to have little or no complimentary products or services, you may be bending the definition of a niche.

Links out help with networking and building your brand among influencers of complementary niches.  It doesn't detract from or dilute your site's strength,  so long as you keep them in the general vicinity of your site's theme.  It will only help you if you create a few relationships with some other sites and share those relationships with your visitors via links.

[DennisSeymour]

I would ignore that problem since its a pretty small niche. Google wont even think of doing anything in a very small niche since it wont be able to show much relevant links so its forced to show your site no matter what. But like Chris said, it generally, youll need to do it for building relationships and citing authoritative websites.

[Carson-Ward]

To answer your question directly: don't worry about it. I mean that both ways. Don't worry about the fact that you've not linked out to a lot of sites in the past. Google's not going to drop you down simply because you don't have a lot of outward-pointing links. Second, much like Chris said, don't make a point of avoiding external links.