Both internal links and inbound links are important for SEO, they are not the same and it is important to know the difference between both of them.
What is an internal link?
Internal links are exactly what they sound like. Links that are internal, meaning they are located on your website and link from one page to another on all while staying on your site. For example, when visiting a website and the closing sentence provides you with a link to their contact us page. This is an example of an internal link. When setting up your internal links keep in mind that the link should be a way to make it easier for user to navigate the site and get the end goal, a conversion. Whether its making a phone call, booking a class, or purchasing a product. Always keep the user in mind when implementing internal links.
What is an inbound link?
An inbound link can also be referred to as an external link or back link, as it is a link on another website that points user to your site. Inbound links can be industry specific directories or articles that your company may appear in. If the website referencing your website is a relevant, high quality, well known website than search engines assume you are just as relevant and legitimate! However, same goes for bad inbound links, if the link is low-quality and spammy with no relevance to your website, search engines will mark this as black hat seo and penalize you website, requiring you to remove these links by disavowing them in Google’s webmasters tools.
When it comes to having the most impact on your rankings, legitimate inbound links do carry a little more weight however, internal links are also taken into consideration. If you put effort into your internal links and monitor your inbound links you will see how these two can contribute to your websites rankings.