What makes a good link and how to write one

As with many things in life, writing a hyperlink is easy to do but not necessarily easy to do well. How many times have you seen the famous blue “Click Here” for example? Too many if you ask me!

So what’s the problem?

I’ll tell you:

Context, or more accurately, lack of context.

Because most people who are writing links do so infrequently, and because “Clicking Here” is generally what they want the user to do (rather than the informative link the user needs), that’s what gets linked.
Sadly, that misses the point. The fact that it’s a hyperlink means that it’s styled as a hyperlink in the browser - the fact that it’s clickable is obvious. That information is redundant. Come on! It’s not 1998 anymore...

Instead, consider the user. They know perfectly well what to do with a hyperlink. What they don’t know is what’s on the other side of that link. So tell them by using the link text.

E.g.
Here’s a great article about hashtags that I wrote.

By linking the words that describe the content on the destination page for that link, you’re giving the user contextual and relevant information and ideally, you’re also setting expectations about what they will find there. It’s the polite thing to do!

Importantly, you’re also giving a strong signal to search engines about what keywords are relevant to that page.

Have fun making meaningful links!

Or you could Click Here.

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By Phil Blything – Director of Liverpool Digital Marketing Agency, Glow New Media.

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