A symlink (symbolic link) is similar with a hyperlink in Windows. When you make a shortcut, you’r pointing a link to the physical location.
With the ls – al command you can see if something is a link or a directory.
But!! Only at the position where the link is. The link can point to a different place, of course. But a the physical location you won’t see that there is somewhere else, pointing a link to it.
Ln – s physical_location link_location