"Beware of nofollow links." Is the end all be all search? Is it not worth trying to drive direct, actual traffic(as opposed to search engine referrals) to you

"Beware of nofollow links." Is the end all be all search? Is it not worth trying to drive direct, actual traffic(as opposed to search engine referrals) to your site. If I provided service "foo" or consulted on "foo" I'd love to have links to my articles/sites in the citations and or external sites list on the "foo" wikipedia article.