Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.
Rob Baker: Do external links to quality sites, help with SEO?
Ajith Prasad Edassery: I would think yes. When you 'follow' link to a site, you are telling Google that you vouch for that site and they like that. But if the external links are part of a paid scheme or link exchange that they recognize, your site is doomed. Disclaimer: I have no proof to show for the former but that's what I get to hear :-)
Jeff Guest: Make sure the sites you link to are relevant. I believe a link to a good quality site that isn't relevant to your site won't help you very much and could even damage your SEO. ;
Jam Hassan: If it is necessary to link a website use rel=nofollow it wouldn't hurt you as you are not passing any link juice and participating in page rank manipulation .
Ashish Ahuja: there is not much effect with SEO perse IMHO but it looks more natural to google
Tim McDonald: I often link technical terms in my blog posts to Wikipedia pages and the like. I have not seen any harm from it. Don't know if it is beneficial to anyone other than my readers though.
Micah Fisher-Kirshner: Bing has noted it does, however, Google has never directly noted it helps. Google has, however, suggested it is good UX to do so.
My view is that one should where appropriate both from a UX standpoint, but also from indirect benefits (you linking to me might result in me linking to you in turn).
Jelani Burton: +Ashish Ahuja ;do you think that it could negatively affect you (unnatural link pattern) if you don't use external links? ;I know it's better for UX but I wonder if Google has explicitly commented on this. Thanks
PK Group: Since relevant, high quality links help with your user experience, its generally good SEO practice to include them.
Abhishek Yadav: yeah...use high domain authority sites for this purpose
Ashish Ahuja: +Jelani Burton not having the links does not effect negatively and google has not mentioned anything explicitly as far as I know but for me having these links increases one factor i.e. relevancy if you are linking to relevant high authority sites google treats your page as relevant to what is the topic on the authority sites, which is also a factor in ranking (a minor factor)
W.E. Jonk: From the expert panel in this weeks SEO Questions hangout on air on 01:07:34 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/do_external_links_to_quality_sites_help_with_seo
Do external links to quality sites, help with SEO?? 
