Removing an Outbound Link

will removing the link hurt the page ranking?

[gardener]

After following some suggestions here, I made several changes to my site, including adding an external link on my home page to another site. My site went up a few notches. Now, I would like to get rid of that link (that site has become somewhat of a competitor) but I'm afraid removing the link could be detrimental to my positon. Any thoughts? and yes, the link is relevant to my content. I link to lots of subtopic pages from my home page but that's the only external link.

[dazz]

I would be very surprised if it affected your ranking at all by removing the link.

[martinibuster]

Hey, you never know. It could be adding relevance to his page. There's only one way to find out.

Don't make any changes to the site, remove the link. If you've made changes, wait until the next update, then remove the link.

Be sure to let us know what happened.

[buckworks]

Before you remove the link, try asking them if they'd link back to you with a link of comparable prominence, strategic wording, etc.

It's counter-intuitive to trade links with competitors, but it could benefit both of you if you do it right.

[HyperGeek]

Removing the outbound link can actually work in your favor.

The less links on a page the less dilluted their value becomes.

In other words, 10 links (with the proper wording) leading inbound to other areas of your site are better than having, let's say, those same 10 inbound on the same page - along with 2 outbound to other web sites.

The integrity of multiple links continues to dissolve with the more links you add to that page (outbound or not):

1 link = 100% integrity
2 links = 50% integrity each
20 links = 5% integrity each

This is one of the reasons why some sites have a "Links" page instead of listing a series of sister-sites at the bottom of each page (well, besides the tradition of having a links page).

This is also why I was advised about a year ago to remove, from the front page, links to the search engines we were listed in. Once I removed those five links, there were only four others on the page... all with proper keywording... and we went up a couple of notches.

This completely leads me to believe in this hypothesis.