michaelj72 - 6:04 am on Oct 16, 2010 (gmt 0)

i have a site which i have done a lot of work on, part of it brings in some cash revenue because of the services i offer in my niche, but much of it is actually a big community resource for the town i live in, which i try to keep updated (and for which i don't accept any advertising or paid links etc). I've been linking out for years, sometimes they are link exchanges which have ended up on the links page, but I have many higly informational pages with plenty of links out to other useful sites in my niche.

i was actually quite surprised when I learned how to do a check on all the outbound links from my site on Bing, it was indeed substantial. so i've more than matched wheel and quite agree with him and others - links are what made/make the web and (too) many webmasters have become hoarders or do it only if they see an (usually monetary) advantage for themselves, while not thinking so much about the visitors. & no one website out there can cover it all for any medium sized city/niche. I always figure visitors will appreciate links out to other useful sites that have good info, in addition to what I can provide in my limited experience/time/energy....

I also believe from reading around that good linking out/"linking up" can very much help establish Authority for a website