Don’t Be a Link Nazi
I may be the only SEO that doesn’t buy into the myth that your PageRank (PR) gets passed out by linking to other websites. It’s a stupid myth that I’ve never believed. Seriously, do you really think your PageRank gets distributed when you link to another website? Sillyness!
If you link to other people your PageRank does not get passed out, in other words the PR on your site is not lowered if you link to other people. There’s a difference to passing authority and passing PR. Passing authority simply means that your site, which we hope has some authority is passing on some love to the site you’re linking to. You’re giving the site a vote of confidence, which turns into PR for them, but it’s not at the expense of your own PageRank.
I think this where the common misconception lies (from the original Google research pape)…
The PageRank given to Page A by a Page B pointing to it is decreased
with each link to anywhere that exists on Page B. That means a page’s
PageRank is essentially a measure of its vote; it can split that vote
between one link or two links or many more, but its overall voting
power will always be the same.
It doesn’t say that the PR of site B is lowered which each link it gives out. It basically says the more sites that site B links to the less PageRank each of those sites gets.
So stop being a link nazi and spread the link love. If anything this will only help you, not hurt you. Some people are going so far as to putting no follow tags on their own inbound links, this is ridiculous.
Feel free to agree or disagree.