As a rule (with some exceptions) people surf the web because they are
looking for information or entertainment. These are the primary uses of the
internet. Generally, surveys show that shopping or making any kind of
purchase is not high on the reasons people spend their time web surfing. No
indeed, what they primarily want is to find out something. In fact, it is
quite common for your average surfer to use a web site to research their
purchase, then drive down to the local store to pick it up themselves.
If you site has a good, well coordinated set of external links than you are
giving your visitors access to additional information, which in turn
provides them with an excellent reason to visit your site again. Yes, your
visitor may surf elsewhere, but given that the quality of the external links
is high, he will most likely return.
I have spent much time figuring dark web links out a good ratio of external links within a
web site. I have found that a site can definitely have too many links to
other sites. Too many links produces a whole series of problems:
The desire is to have quality links. This is what causes visitors to want
to return. A large quantity of external links (especially a huge number on a
single page) tends to make it seem as if the links are of lesser quality. In
other words, the appearance is that you just slapped together a bunch of
links without much thought.
– If a large number of your links are of subjects unrelated to your web
site, then you most definitely have degraded, in the eyes of your visitors,
your site. You see, they came to your site because it contained information
about a specific subject (or several different subjects). Linking to
unrelated sites tends to dilute your site and chase away visitors.