What is External Link and Internal Link?

Internal link

External link

Hi Robert.
It's very simple really.
An INTERNAL link is a link on a web page that takes you to another page within the website eg. please contact us could be a link to the website's contact page.
An EXTERNAL link will take you out of the website to another website eg. my own website is www.artworks-unlimited.co.uk

INBOUND links - YOUR web address on other people's sites which when clicked will bring visitors YOUR website. These are the most highly valued links for search engine ratings, especially if they are from high status, totally relevent sites.
RECIPROCAL links - you put me on your site and I'll put you on mine! (a kind of "69" business arrangement!!!). Often abused in the past with completely unrelated websites swapping links to gain higher ratings. BUT Google etc can spot these a mile off... DON'T DO IT!
OUTBOUND links - another term for EXTERNAL link... takes you off-site to somewhere else.

Okay? cheers, Paul Shotan
artworks unlimited
low cost, high quality, custom websites, graphic design and hosting

Shotan is spot on with his explanation

One thing to remember is to use your keywords when backlinking

for example if your keyword was " blue widget" then you would link back to your url like so:

<a href="Your websites url"> blue widget </a>

this gives search engines a way of recognising what you page is about. The ideal way of linking like this is to use contextual backlinks, such as links within the body of an article.

Inbound Links are those links from other sites that are pointing to your site.
Outbound links (reverse definition of inbound links). Links on your site pointing to others.

Good question, and some great answers. Using anchor text in the backlinks is crucial.

I thought I read somewhere don't just use your main keyword but change it up? When I read it it left me a little confused as surely you want to get your main keyword backlinked everywhere, why you would change it? For example I want to rank high for 'promotional gifts' so this is my main keyword but 'promotional items' or 'corporate gifts' are also useful keywords.

Any thoughts from the people in the know on this?

It depends on how many keywords you are talking about. The reality is very few people will only want to optimise 1 key word. Establish which are your top 5 best performing keywords, and then once you have made good progress with the first one, start to spread the effort across the others.

This isn't a quick win solution, that's what PPC is for, but it's a good longterm organic strategy.

Ok, sounds logical, thanks Steve!

I will continue to work on promotional gifts, then start doing some work on promotional items, corporate gifts and business gifts. I am aware that it is a long term thing and something that needs to be on going.

Cheers

Ian

Internal link means the links within the site. Link pointing to the inner page of the same website.
External Link means the links goes outside. Link pointing to the other site from your site.

James I hope your not trying to make your posts up to the magic number 10 asap

Please make sure you read the full thread before posting comments, you will see details of different links have been explain early in the thread.