How to Create a Hyperlink Inside a Blog Post

Laura Christianson of Blogging Bistro  continues her series

of fantastic tips for social media

and website management.

A good blog should be loaded with helpful links to other sites. Why?

1. Offering useful links positions you as the go-to source for excellent info on your topic. Readers who trust your link will come back for more.
2. The owners of the sites you link to will often link back to you – or refer their readers to your site – a win-win for everyone.
3. Search engines index hyperlinks; when you link properly, your blog will move up in the rankings.

Many bloggers hyperlink incorrectly. All too often, their links look like this:

For more info on this topic, click here.

What do you suppose the phrase “click here” means to a search engine?

Absolutely nothing.

When you create a hyperlink, never highlight the phrase, “click here.”

Instead, highlight the keyword-rich anchor text, like this:

In this tutorial, I’ll teach you how to link to your Facebook business page from your Facebook profile.

I could have hyperlinked two parts of this sentence:

1. The link to the Facebook tutorial (which I did).
2. A link to my Facebook profile (which I didn’t, because I want people who follow my blog visit Blogging Bistro’s Facebook page).

Your Assignment:

Scan your 10 most recent blog posts for hyperlinks. Did you hyperlink the anchor text? If not, go back and update your links. Do it now before you forget!

Related Articles:

• When–and how–to compress URLs
• Bright Ideas Blogzine (Sept 08) –  How to cross-promote through linking

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This post first appeared October 30, 2009 on Blogging Bistro. Used by kind permission.

A relationship marketer for over 25 years, Laura Christianson owns Blogging Bistro, a company that helps people enhance their Internet presence through Websites, blogs, Twitter, and Facebook.  She’s the author of three books and enjoys mentoring emerging writers and teaching at writers’ conferences. An active member of NCWA since 2004, Laura lives in Snohomish with her husband, their two teenage sons, and two gigantic tomato plants.