How To Properly Hyperlink
Read about the basic terminology and best practices of hyperlinking your texts for highest ranking and traffic
Read about the basic terminology and best practices of hyperlinking your texts for highest ranking and traffic
LET’S REVIEW THE TERMINOLOGY FIRST:
Hyperlink: Word(s) that you can click to jump to a new document or webpage, allowing you to navigate from page to page
Anchor text: The text that is linked and highlighted on the page
HTML code: <a href=”full URL”>anchor text</a>
Internal Links: Links on your site going to another internal page. These links are very beneficial both for Google to pass the PageRank (page authority) to your deeper pages, and for the users to keep them engaged on the site, so that they discover more pages that might be of interest to them and convert them. This is called the Wikipedia effect.
Outbound Links: Links going from your site to any external site
No Follow: For links going outside your website, called outbound links, a NO FOLLOW code has to be added to the hyperlink, to avoid that the target site benefits from your authority. By doing so, we are telling Google “do not follow this link as we do not guarantee the quality of the target/outside site”. This is done this way in the html code: <a rel= “ nofollow “ href=”http://www.unknown.com/”>Unknown Site</a>. Be careful on the quotation marks. Try to use the simple double quotation mark ( ") instead of the right and left quotes (most text editor change them automatically).
BEST PRACTICES FOR ANCHOR TEXTS:
DO’s: Use descriptive, keyword-rich text that tells the user where he is going to be directed. People tend to use brand names, but using keyword-rich text is an advantage for SEO as it will help your site rank for these keywords. The important thing to remember is to manage user expectations when linking a word. Is it clear where I am going if I click on this link.
Examples: View Contemporary Art For Sale on Sotheby’s. Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, chairman of the Sydney Biennale, resigned.
DON’T’s: Do not use general words or part of a sentence for anchor text, as this is very unclear to the user and to Google where the link will bring you. The anchor text needs to be meaningful on its own. In the example below, “has resigned” is meaningless on its own, and it is forcing the reader to read the text around it to understand. Links needs to be understood when scanning the text. Also, we don’t want to rank in Google for keywords such as “has resigned”.
Example: Luca Belgiorno-Nettis has resigned following widespread opposition
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