Link to Sites in Good Neighborhoods

The Search Engine Round Table posted about a Q&A they participated in with Matt Cutts. The discussion was about the effectiveness of using of no-follows in the comments in a blog. This was Matt’s response -

Q: Okay, but doesn’t this encourage me to link out less? Should I turn off comments on my blog?
A: I wouldn’t recommend closing comments in an attempt to “hoard” your PageRank. In the same way that Google trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites or bad neighborhoods, parts of our system encourage links to good sites.

Matt does not elaborate on what “parts of our system encourage links to good sites” means, but I interpret it as this:  system = algorithm and encourage = reward with better rankings.  If this is the case, then this lends some weight to a theory I posted about a while back – Can you Improve your Rankings through Outgoing Links?

Google gives preference to sites they consider an authority on subjects. One way they determine if a site is an authority is by outgoing links. If Google sees a site linking out to many related sites, they see that site a reference or authority on whatever that site (or page) is about. Now there are many other factors that come in to play, but outgoing links is one of them. So, if you link out to other sites, isn’t reasonable to believe Google will give your site a little credit as an authority?

Matt also wrote an in depth post called PageRank Sculpting. I haven’t had a chance to read it, but I’ll check it out next week and see if there’s anything more to learn about the benefits of outgoing links on your site.

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