As far as whether you want to have a helpful link page that could potentially drive people away from your site, I’d say that really depends on what kind of site you have.

For example, if you’re a vendor and want your page to function as a pure sales-driving machine, then it’s a good idea not to distract people or potentially lose them from the sales funnel. However, if your goal is to be seen as a valuable resource that people should trust, then it looks pretty suspicious if you don’t link to anyone but yourself. Visitors will appreciate links that help them, so they may end up coming back to you even if you leave. Also, if you make any links you post open in a new tab or window, the visitor won’t actually leave your site.

As for the Google “leak” thing, that directly contradicts what I’ve heard regarding best SEO practices. Google wants your site to be filled with good information and be a resource to people, even if that means linking out to other relevant sites.

The “link exchange” issue is correct, though; you don’t get nearly as much credit for links to your site if you get linked back to from the same place. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still do it in some cases. If it’s a site that would be relevant to your audience and vice versa, you may end up just getting traffic through the link anyway, regardless of whether it helps your search engine rankings or not. So it could still be worth doing, just not exclusively for SEO purposes.

You can follow me (as ClickBank) at http://www.twitter.com/clickbank. Hope that helps!

Beau

Whoever told you that you shouldn’t link out to other websites is totally wrong! Google wants to see that you’re a “good neighbor” and link to other websites, but they need to be at least somewhat relevant to your topic. You don’t need to link out to thousands of other websites, but a few well-placed links to valuable or well-known sites in your niche can actually help your search rankings.

Thanks for all the absolutely FANTASTIC content and how-to’s.. I’m a beginner affiliate, and business owner, and loving it. I wonder if you can confirm this info: someone told me not to put ANY links in my website for other people/to other sites, as google PENALIZES (in the rankings) for this; just to go and get backlinks to MY website (using all recommended methods). However, I don’t get it: if google penalizes us for having other people’s links on our website, why would any site put up a link for you? Confused..

I’m just learning too, but 100% of what I’ve read say they don’t recommend using paid ads on google when you’re a beginner. See all the recent posts on this blog, I’m sure I read that in there somewhere. Just keep reading, there are amazing ‘how to’s’ for beginners in this blog, at clickbank.com and also at http://www.affilorama.com.