How important are external links?
If you want to see how important links are, open your web browser, go to Google, and do a search on "Click Here". The first result is Adobe Acrobat Reader download page. Interesting, no? Even more interesting is the fact that the words "Click Here" are nowhere on the page. It would be silly to use "Click Here" as keywords because it is not a normal search term, and Adobe did not even include them