Link Popularity versus potential indirect linking to the competition

Reciprocal linking to improve ranking but indirect linking to competitors..

[Philiboy]

I have a website which provides financial advice including advice on mortgages, savings and investments. I want to boost my link popularity. I've found a lot of relevant / complementary sites to exchange links with (with higher Google PageRank), but unfortunately a lot of them link to my competitors, or they are web directories (also with links to my competitors). I am worried about sending my visitors off to the competition. Or should I not be worried i.e. will the advantage of improved link popularity (and the links TO my site from my link partners) outweigh the disadvantage of losing some visitors to the competition?

[BroadProspect]

if you wont , someone else will, simply do it , think about the customer intrest and not yours
/BP

[chrisnrae]

Speaking from a business standpoint, you shouldn't be trying to hide the competition from your customers. You should be working on making your own business stand out from the competition and being apparently better than the competition. I'm not saying light up a runway to your competition, but I also don't think trying to keep your customers blind to the competition is an effective business strategy.

In reality, with the type of products your talking about, people are going to research anyway. I would say link when it makes sense to do so and then put your focus on making your site the one they settle on when their ready to do business.