search engine is clever enough to know which are free directories where people submit their links to get the good rank. don't worry about the incoming links. just focus on the content. outgoing links are important but must be related to your content and they should be quality links. don't link your friend's newly launched blog. it wont help you. link to good articles which are related to your content, good websites, etc. hope that answered ur question.
Hi Susan, I think you've read the wrong meaning into the text you quoted. What's most important is getting links to your website from others. When it says: "divided by the number of links on each of those pages (its outgoing links)" it means a link to you from a website is worth less if that website also links out to many other websites.
Agree with T_media, you got it wrong. You should get backlinks to your website and also try to make sure that the page linking to your site doesn't have too many outgoing links.
Worry about everything and nothing Get links to your site, but do so with content that makes people want to link to you as a reference. Write for people instead of search engines and you'll see the results.
The answer is inbound because in brings you page rank. There are two types of outbound links. Internal links to pages within your site which are good. And external links going to another web site that are bad. This link should have the attribute "nofollow" added to it. ************ And welcome to DP