Links to your site from other sites should improve your link popularity that should result in additional traffic. To put it simply, the more links point to your site the better. Search engines consider the number of incoming links to your website (“link popularity”) a crucial factor in ranking.
Quality is more important than quantity. If you get links from sites that are completely unrelated to your industry, you may gain nothing. Links from authority sites are infinitely more valuable than links from FFA (Free For All) link farms. Note: FFA sites list hundreds or thousands of links within their pages indiscriminately. FFAs dont care about whom and what they link to, and links from them are worthless.
Find complementary websites from within your own industry, and ask for a link. The best way to contact another site for a reciprocal links is by e-mail. Be sure to link to the other site before you send your e-mail. It is more likely that your link will be reciprocated if you link first. If they decide not to link back to you, you just remove the link from your site.
Dont hide your links page, but dont advertise it either. Make sure there is a link...