What are Links? - External and Internal Links

As mentioned in the previous post about what to expect I am writing this post about what are links. I am only concentrating on providing a basic understanding of links and would follow this post up with a lot more information on why linking is important.

Definitions for Link
"A causal, parallel, or reciprocal relationship; a correlation"
"An association; a relationship"
"A segment of text or a graphical item that serves as a cross-reference between parts of a hypertext document or between files or hypertext documents"

The above definitions provide an idea of the word links and it depends on the industry and the context where the word is used. For our blogging terms we just need to understand the following
- Every page is interlinked or chosen to be interlinked, clicking on one link will lead you to the other page
- A link will lead you to another page or another website
- Also called hyperlinks, is a cross reference between texts

There are primarily two types of links
External Links : Are links which lead the people who are on various websites and by clicking these would be brought to your website
Internal Links: Are links which lead you to the main page(Homepage) from internal pages or to internal pages from the main page

I am sure these terms are over the head to a few people, I was among the few about 8 months back before I launched the first blog World Cuisines. It has been a constant learning and now I am sharing the learning I've had through this blog. Anyways, to explain this logic of linking I would cite an example
Imagine the network of air travel, there are a lot of flights to a lot of places from a single origin and back. There are both domestic (Within a country) and international (Cross country) flights that take of and land at the airport.
Now, Imagine your website as the domestic network and the whole Internet as international network.
The flights moving from one city to another within the country(Website) is internal links
The flights moving from one city to an international city, which is outside of the country(website) is an external link. It is very important for the airport(the homepage) to have many domestic and international flights to have more revenue.
Likewise it is absolute necessity to have a lot of external and internal links, it would be a lot clearer and you would have a better understanding of the reason for this statement once you have clarity of what is SEO and ranking. We will see about importance of linking in the posts to follow.

Suggested Reading:
Google Analytics - Effectively using it
Things to do after your first blog