Did Google Panda and Penguins have any effect on Outbound Links?

[sherohass]

I am just a beginner in SEO. But has any of the changes recently implemented by google affected out bound links? Meaning if a website now has a good number of outbound links to strong websites and pages could that Translate to better rankings?

[EGOL]

Linking out to highly trusted sites that are relevant to the content of your page is very beneficial to your visitors.  It helps them find more information about the topic and that should improve their opinion of your content.  That can result in visitors tweeting about your page, sharing it on facebook, linking to it from their blogs, bookmarking your page and staying on it longer.  These reactions can result in higher rankings.  So the answer to your question is "yes" for indirect reasons.

It is also possible that google gives a tiny boost to sites that link out to very relevant pages on highly trusted websites.  So, there is a possible direct benefit - that is probably small.

I am wondering about a related question.  Now that SEOs are moving away from directories, blog/forum comments, and other low value links, many of them are offering high-quality unique articles to highly-trusted sites.  How dangerous is it for the highly-trusted site to accept these content gifts.  Should they be doing link quality analysis before accepting the article even if it only has one outgoing link with the author name or domain as the anchor text?

Since Penguin I am getting a flood of content offers.  Most of them are trash, some are pedestrian but a few are really high quality but I am skeptical of taking them if the site is in a highly competitive niche where lots of aggressive methods are used.

[sherohass]

Hi,

Thanks for reply. I think offering content is pretty popular now to high PR sites that authors can get back links from rather than Submitting to directories which in most cases is pain. They get free backlinks by their content form good websites like yours.

S.H