I have a quick question. I have been extremely cautious with my linking strategy for my new site. I realize that linking to bad neighbourhoods can give you a penalty if google doesnt like them. My question is this: Can you get a penalty for not having any/enough outgoing links? Do outgoing links have any relevence whatsoever on indexing/SERPs/etc? Thanks for the responses.
No, not penalty for indexing. Debatable about SERP positions though and NOT having any outgoing links.
Unless you're linking to a link farm you're really not going to be in a bad neighborhood. Link to sites of quality and you'll have no problems. It's in the nature of the net to link. Pass the love.
There's a huge debate on this subject (search DP for starters), but my view is this: outgoing links to authoritive sites using good anchor text can help the bots decides what keywords your site is about. (Someone gave a good example using the keyword 'spider' - arachnid or search bot?) Basically, it's a good way to increase your keyword density without spamming. Remember to add title tags to your links too. Cryo.
This is great advice. I didn't even think about the keyword density of my links page. I guess I will put some quality links on my pages but make sure my keywords are used if possible.