Linking to main page or inner pages?

What is the best bang for your buck?

[webstuck]

This has probably been asked before, but I can't seem to find an exact answer anywhere.

I currently have a large content website that encompasses several smaller niche sections. When building links to this site, should I have related websites link directly to those niche sections or link to our main page?

It seems to make more sense visitor-wise to direct them to the specific sections that the previous website they were on was about. For example, they were on a boxes website, so the link to our website goes to the boxes section rather than our main page.

For SEO and PR purposes though, which would be better? Linking directly to the niche sections to help their PR or to the main page to have the PR spread throughout the site.

What do you do?

Thanks in advance!

[leadegroot]

Both.
You want a variety of links to different pages with varying anchor text.

[dchase]

If you had a choice, you should have websites linking to the pages that have the most similiar content.

meaning if site A was a site about boxes, have them link to the specefic niche page within your domain that is about 'boxes'.

This keeps you in a very targeted and valueable neighborhood.