Its an internal link. Internal links are actually important, you want the visitor to be able to get around the different pages of your site easily and Google recognizes that.

It does not qualify as an external or inbound link though. You need links from other sites for that.

Internal linking is more important than ever now, people who don't do it are people who don't spend enough time building their websites. Big sites are ranking off internal links..

Yes, it is counting an an internal link to your home page and it has good effect on your ranking. You can see and check internal links of your sites on your Google webmaster tools too.

Internal link structure is very important as always you are trying to enhance user experience :-)

its internal link. Page rank is determine by internal link and external link, so the more internal link you have to a page, the better page rank won will get.

page rank is not completely from links :-) lots of other factors involved :-)

But still none the less all links are valuable :-)

Just use them wisely

Internal links are always helpful.Its needed to make the site user friendly.Its also work as backlink.