stupid question - Do I hurt my site if I link to other websites?

[Kikos]

Hi sorry stupid question, I currently dont have any links to any not-mine website from my website mostly because I am afraid to "lose PR juice" or something of the sort, so...
if I make a link to whatever other website do I always lose even if its a little or it is not a problem to make a link to another website?

(I am not talking about the ethical part of it, just the SEO part)



thanks!

[Marketing Fool]

Hi,

Some people have suggested that search engines actually *like* to see external links because it shows that you aren't trying to game the PR system.

I think it's perfectly fine to link to external websites. I don't think you'll lose PR link juice by doing it, and even if you did; it would be an incredibly insignificant amount.

The best rule of thumb is to think of your site visitors. Will giving them a link to a helpful 3rd party website benefit them? Probably - because you want to give them as much useful info as possible.

So from those points of view, I'd feel comfortable adding the link.

[Kikos]

Thanks Marketing Fool, I totally understand the visitors point of view, I just want to know the SEO part of it

[3000]

It's funny that you asked this because I just read about this not too long ago. The WSO said that if you link to an authority site like Wikipedia your site will get rewarded and get a higher ranking.

I tried it and to my surprise it worked! All I did was write a 500 word article on the keyword I wanted to rank for and I turned one of the keywords in the article to a contextual link to a Wikipedia page about the keyword.

It worked ! I was sitting at 5-6 on Goolge but after I did that my site jumped to position #3.