Don't put links on your home page.

[hollyhats]

I have been told many times not to display links on my home page. I was getting ready to make a seperate "links page", when I discovered something interesting.
These links actually seem to help me in the SE. All of the links on my home page are business associated with what I sell. So in turn when you search for any of them, my business is listed right after them.
Can anyone tell me why this could be bad. Cause I can't see why right now.

[JamesR]

I don't think you get much of a bonus right now linking to other sites, but if they link back to you it will help you in the search engines.

People say not to do this because you don't want traffic leaving your site for another. However, if you feel it benefits your users, doesn't take sales away from you, and are getting home page links back from the other businesses, it would be fine to keep them up.

[martinibuster]

That is an interesting discovery.

Anybody have a theory on why this would help in the serps?

I think that this makes your site look like a hub of information, and thus important, in the eyes of G.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always understood that outbound links are very important, and that by hoarding PR, you actually hurt yourself.

[jdMorgan]

How about the fact that the link text on these outgoing links is likely to contain keywords relevant to your site if the sites that you link to are relevant to your site? It could just be the words in the link text that help you in the SERPs.

Being a "hub" may help in Teoma, but I haven't studied that one much.

Jim

[Axacta]

I did a search of the board on outbound links a few months ago, and last year it was expected to be benefitial for both PR and serps. Brent even included an advisory of placing two outbound links to high PR sites on every page in his "26 steps to 15k a Day" article on SEW. But the expectation was never fulfilled and the consensus turned out to be that they add no benefit to PR or serps and probably never will.