Understanding Links
Search engine advice never fails to mention the importance of links. Before understanding how these improve your search engine ranking, one must understand what links are. Incoming and outgoing links are the basic two types of links found on the Web.
Incoming or inbound links
These are the links found on other sites that point to yours. From a search engine optimization point of view, these are the best links to have. The more the better; but they must be relevant. For example, if your website is a personal portfolio of photographs, it would make sense for galleries, magazines or others to give you credit and link to your website when using your photographs.
You may have received emails from people who want to exchange links (i.e. you link to me and I link to you). These are called reciprocal links. Once again be wary of linking willy-nilly. If the links are not relevant, search engines will penalize you and you will loose credibility in the eyes of your audience.
Outgoing links
These are the links displayed on your site that lead to other sites. From a marketing point of view, these links don’t add any value since they lead your visitors away from your website. However, if the links are relevant and informative your users may come back and respect you because your website provides them with valuable resource.
In conclusion when marketing your website, the more “relevant” incoming links you have the more traffic and better search engine rankings. Adding outgoing links to your website will not improve your search engine rankings but leads your users to other valuable resources.