If you have a website or blog, you are going to have to deal with hyperlinks. This basic guide to links will tell you what you need to know to add links and use them to boost your website ranking.
What is a Hyperlink
A hyperlink - often called just link - is used to direct a user to another document or to a part of the same document they are reading. While hyperlinks are often used in documents other than web pages and blogs, for our purposes, that is where we will be using them. This article focuses on using links in HTML documents.
A link might send your reader to another web site or to another page or blog post on your site. They might even just lead to another section of the same page.
As affiliate marketers, we also use links to guide our visitors to our affiliate offers. How we do that and how we use links in other way to enhance our web presence is critical to our online success.
Basic HTML Link
If you look at a page in WordPress Text mode, here is how the most basic HTML link looks:
<a href="http://website_url">Some text</a>
Here is an example of how it works in practice:
To follow this link, click here.
Notice that "click here" is the anchor text and it is colored blue. That lets the reader know there is something different about this text. Anyone with just a little online experience will recognize it as a link. If you click it you will just come back to this page.
Here is what the actual HTML code looks like for this basic link:
To follow this link, <a href="https://affiliatemarketing.thomasclough.com/a-basic-guide-to-links-how-to-use-html-hyperlinks">click here</a>.
External Links
An external link is any link that points to a web site other than the one the link is on. In other words, it points to another domain. Our affiliate links are external links as are links to other websites we might cite as support for or clarification of our content.
For example, this link points to a Wikipedia article about hyperlinks. You could visit it to learn more about links.
This link will lead you away from my site and I don't want that. I want you to stay here and enjoy the rest of this article. Please? To let you see the Wikipedia page but keep you here too, I used a target attribute.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink" target="_blank">Wikipedia article about hyperlinks</a>
In this anchor, the "target="_blank" tells the browser to open the link in a new tab or window while keeping the current page open too.
External links can effect the ranking of pages, especially affiliate links. More about that later.
Internal Links
An internal link is a hyperlink that points to another page or resource on the same website. In the first example above, the link back to this article is an internal link. If I link to another post or page on this website it would also be an internal link.
Here is a link to my Why Affiliate Marketing? page.
It is also on the affiliatemarketing.thomasclough.com domain so it is internal.
The internal link looks like any other - only the domain name makes it different from an external link.
<a href="https://affiliatemarketing.thomasclough.com/why-affiliate-marketing" target="_blank">home page</a>
You could use what are known as relative URLs to make internal links and at one time that was the norm. Today though relative links are considered bad SEO practice. If you want to read more about why they have fallen out of favor just follow this external link.
Jump Links
It is possible to link to a specific point in the same page or in a different page in the same domain. This is done by adding an anchor tag at the start of the section you want to link to and then adding a link to that anchor. An example should make it clear.
If I want to jump to the text right after the heading "What is a Hyperlink?" in this post, I would add an anchor there like this:
<h3>What is a Hyperlink?</h3><a id="hyperlink"></a>
This set the anchor "hyperlink" where I want the browser to jump to.
Now I can add a link in the text to jump to that spot.
The code for the link looks like this:
<a href="#hyperlink"> jump to that spot</a>
If the link was on a different page or post I would use the full URL before the anchor to point to it. For example, to point to the a section on the Why Affiliate Marketing? page I would set the anchor on that page then link to it here. And the code would look like this:
<a href="https://affiliatemarketing.thomasclough.com/about-me#about">link to it here</a>
Creating Links In WordPress
Fortunately for us, WordPress and most other content editors, like Thrive Architect that I am using here, make linking easy. In WordPress the link tool on the editor page does the work. Just select the text you want for your anchor and click the tool.
A popup will open where you can enter a link, set the target option if desired or link to another page on the site.
WordPress doesn't come with an easy way to add jump links but there are plugins like TinyMCE Advanced that support them. That plugin, often called "Tiny Mice" is a good one to have for other reason too. It adds a lot of functionality to the WP editor.
Special Considerations
That about does it for the basic mechanics of adding hyperlinks to content. There are a few things we should consider about links to make our sites rank higher in the search engines though.
Internal Link Considerations
Google and other search engines like internal links. Their web bots or "spiders" can navigate from page to page within the site through the internal links. It tells them which pages are related and helps figure out which are most important.
You should not think about the robots as you write your content though. Write for your readers. What other pages on your site would give them more information about the topic of your article? Is there similar information readers might also be interested in? Add links to help your visitors and the spiders will like them too.
Internal links are good. Use them freely.
Backlink Considerations
Backlinks are links TO your website FROM other sites. They are one of the most important factors in how highly your site is ranked by the search engines. At the same time, they are also one of the most difficult for you to control.
The site the link is coming from and it’s ranking make a huge difference. Even the wording of the anchor text that they use to link to your site is important.
In general, backlinks are a good thing and you should cultivate them. Don’t use spammy or underhanded methods to do it though.
Backlinks are a complicated subject and way to much to cover in a few paragraphs here. Please do your research. Here is a good place to start.
Affiliate Link Considerations
Ahh…affiliate links. These are the bread and butter of our affiliate marketing efforts. Ask 20 affiliate marketers how to handle affiliate links and you will probably get 25 answers. Everybody has at least one opinion about the topic.
For what it’s worth, here are some guidelines I follow. You will come up with your own strategy over time.
Learning more
This basic guide to links can only be an introduction. Hyperlinks and using them on our content sites is a more complicated subject than it might first appear. It is important to our marketing efforts and I am sure I will write about links again. There is a lot of information on the Internet if you want more now. It is a fascinating subject with lots of opinions out there. I will have more to say about links in future posts.
Please let me know what you think. What have your experiences been with using hyperlinks?
Comments and questions are always welcome!
Tom