Do outbound links hurt your site as far as WEB TRAFFIC goes?

Question

I have heard stories both ways???

Answer 1

Can you be a little more specific, about what you mean?

If you have outbound links on your site, you've still captured traffic because they have to be on your site to even see them in the first place.

If you're worried about steering visitors away from your own site, you could always make each outbound link open in a new browser tab/window.  This is done by tagging a link with the "target="_blank" tag.