DO outbound links to manufacture specs, pdfs help or hurt SEO?

[Jamesmcd03]

This post is deleted!

[seoman10]

According to some research outbound links can help Seo, however the link needs to be relevant and in context.

I would be cautious about republishing content in whatever medium (PDF or HTML), Google will see this as duplicate content which means you you will normally position slightly below the original content at best.

[TucsonAZWebDesign]

personally, If I even had to question a link, I would add always rel="nofollow" to the urls. It is definitely important to send outbound links to high authorities, however I micro manage every single outbound link and make sure they're accounted for.

I think it is a good practice to go by, because clearly all the top 100 Alexa ranked domains are ridiculously stingy with their outbound authority passing links. I doubt there is such a thing as too many nofollow links because comments/forums and such have a user base in which is beyond the sites.

But there certainly is such a thing as too many outbound dofollow!