Hyperlink

What is a hyperlink?

A hyperlink is any single word, phrase, or graphic element such as a photo or illustration that takes the user to a different part of a web page, website, or document when clicked.

If you want a more in-depth understanding of this topic, check out the FAQ section below:

Question #1: How do I create a hyperlink?

There are a couple of ways to create a hyperlink, including

1. Hard coding
2. Using keyboard shortcuts
3. Clicking/tapping an apps hyperlink button

Let us go over each one in more detail:

Hard coding, as the name suggests, involves using the HTML tag <a> to create a hyperlink. Its format is as follows:

<a href=“URL”>word or phrase you want to turn into a hyperlink</a>

So, if, for example, you want to turn the phrase ‘our massive collection of movies” into a hyperlink that leads to your movie catalog page, all you have to do is use the code:

<a href=“https://mydomain.com/moviecatalog”>our massive collection of movies</a>

But what if it is an image you want to turn into a hyperlink?

Well, you will use the exact same tag and format but insert another tag in the middle. For instance, if you want to use an image of a bucket of popcorn to lead to your movie catalog page instead of the phrase ‘our massive collection of movies’, you can use the following code:

<a href=”https://mydomain.com/moviecatalog”>

         <img src=”https://mydomain.com/images/popcorn.png”>

</a>

As you can see, it uses the exact same <a> tag format but with the <img> tag in the middle. This particular tag is used to insert images into a webpage. The src attribute, on the other hand, defines the URL or directory where the image you want to insert is located.

There are several other <img> tag attributes you can use, but for the sake of simplicity, we will stop at src today.

Needless to say, hard coding is only a viable option for people who actually know HTML. But do not worry if you have no coding knowledge. You can easily create hyperlinks in things such as your documents, spreadsheets, slide decks, and even emails using the keyboard shortcut ctrl + K on Windows computers and cmd + K on Macs.

All you have to do is highlight the piece of text or image you want to turn into a hyperlink and use the keyboard shortcut to open the create hyperlink menu where you can enter the URL you want the hyperlink to lead to.

Alternatively, you can also just click/tap on the insert hyperlink button on the app you are using if it has one to open the hyperlink menu. You can easily identify it because it will have some depiction of a chain on it.

Question #2: Are hyperlinks good for my website’s SEO?

Yes, hyperlinks can be good for your website’s SEO when they are found on other websites and lead to a page or piece of content on your website.

When used this way, hyperlinks are called backlinks, and the more backlinks your website has from other credible websites, the more it appears as a quality, relevant, and credible resource to Google, which, in turn, may help improve its performance in search.

But this is not the only benefit of having a lot of backlinks. They also help improve your visibility and expand your reach, because they put you in front of the audiences of the websites that link back to yours—which, in turn, may help bring more traffic to your website and further improve your search ranking.

Question #3: Can I just buy backlinks to boost my search ranking?

Yes, you can buy backlinks, but there is no guarantee that doing so would boost your search ranking. In fact, it may even have the exact opposite effect and cause your website to be completely omitted from Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs).

You see, Google does not only look at the number of backlinks you have. It also checks the quality of each link—and it is pretty good at identifying attempts to game the system. If it finds out that you are engaging in shady link building practices, it will penalise you.