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Thanks for the feedback. In this case, we're talking about a birthday supplies site, and we are placing this content at the bottom of product pages. The content is generally helpful (themed party game suggestions, unique recipes, etc) if someone reads it. The external links are in the body of the content and may link to someone's helpful video or blog post on baking a themed birthday cake (for example), but I doubt that much traffic is leaving the site through them (obviously need to test). The point of these external links is to link to relevant sites, so that hopefully in turn, Google,etc sees that we are also relevant to that subject. The inspiration for this practice comes from post like these: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/external-linking-good-for-seo-whiteboard-friday It sounds like you are saying we shouldn't link out at all, but if we do, it really doesn't matter if the link is follow or no-follow. Is this correct?

Hi Robert, Google has traditionally not passed value on links from affiliate programs - the reason being that the site is receiving financial incentives for including those links on the page. However, Paddy Moogan wrote an SEO blog post on SEOmoz on how to optimize your affiliate program to get some links that will create some SEO value.  The link to the blog post is: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-seo-value-from-your-affiliate-links His suggestions include: Use of a Dedicated Landing Page for Big Affiliates Affiliates Linking to the Right Page Help Affiliates Make Their Content More Valuable Add More Value to Widgets and IFrames That Affiliates Use Hopefully this was helpful- If you have any specific questions, please ask away! Best, Stephanie