Outward links and Citations

I just started a new blog type authority niche site and I was wondering about citations and outward backlinks. What?s the general opinion on these things? Necessary? All my content is original.

Is it important to have outward backlinks from your site to other authority or source sites? Most of my articles have an informative nature, but I don?t really cite any other websites usually because I?m not taking any specific information really. Will I be penalized if I don?t have citations or outward backlinks? Is there any benefit to doing this?

If you link to some authority sites, Google may think your content is also Authoritative. There is no proof, but logically that makes sense, so I recommend having few outward links to authority sites.

Great question cowcow,

You have actually touched on a subject of much debate in the SEO world. There a couple of ways to look at this. Some believe (and for good reason) that linking out to other sites is a bad idea because you run the risk of having a hard earned visitor leave your site, its good to keep your link authority internal and that you may be helping your competition.

On the other hand, linking out to other sites that support the content that you write can actually be better. For instance it is a great outreach method depending on who you are linking to. If the site you link to knows you did it, then they will be likely to link to you in the future. The biggest benefit of linking out or citing the theories or principles you write about is that it gives you credibility. In academic publications, researchers provide citations for credit sure but also to bolster their own credibility. An argument is much more powerful for a reader when there are other forms of evidence to back it up. This will resonate much better with your readers and show them that you know what you are talking about.

You can always program your links to open in a new window and remember to not use keyword phrases you are trying to rank for in anchor text for outbound links.

Check out this video from SEOMoz about this topic,

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/external-linking-good-for-seo-whiteboard-friday

Hope that helps,

Shawn

As always, TheContentAuthority's answer is quite awesome.
To answer the last sentence in your post, no, you're not going to be penalized because you haven't put up citations. It is no condition to ranking