How to Code Links for Sidebars and Posts

How to Code Links

One of the first things I encountered as a new blogger that seemed to perplex me was writing the code to build my own links. Once you know how, it seems easy.

I remember too well a major directory I wanted to be in that required you take a button and link it back to their blog. They didn’t provide the code only .jpgs of buttons. I wrote support for help and a guy with geeky attitude basically said, Figure it out for yourself.

Even if you already know how to code links, having this post that lays it out plainly is a handy thing because you’re bound to have a new blogger friend ask you for help on this in the next few weeks.

To keep a blog healthy and sleek, build links the old-fashioned way. It’s really not hard once someone shows you how.Turn the page for explicit examples.

How to Code Links

Note the space after the first a. Note the quotes around the link.

<a href=“https://URL”>Link Anchor Text</a >

Voila! Get the characters where they go and that code shows this.

Link Anchor Text

The Code Explained: The Link Itself

“https://URL”

If you want to link to the blog itself, put the blog’s home page URL.

“https://www.successful-blog.com”

Post Links

If you want to link to a specific post, code a Permalink, the permanent address of the post.

“https://www.successful-blog.com/1/blog-basics-1-comments-and-comment-policies/”

Some blog software offers a marked Permalink below the post to take you to a post’s permanent address. In some, you get to the permanent address by clicking the title of the post. In Blogger, click the time the post was entered.

You know you have the Permalink when the address in your browser’s address bar includes words from the title or other words tht show specific archive information.

In your own post, highlight the text you’ll use as the anchor for your link — do use more descriptive than the words click here. Then click the link button above your post screen and put the permalink in the pop-up box that appears. Hit ok and the hyperlink is made for you. (It works much the same in a WORD document by the way.)

Why Links?

Links are what makes the Internet a weblike structure. Links connect us and our content and show how our blogs are relevant and important to each other. The more we are linked, the more relevant search engines and people consider our content to be. What a fine way links have of building our business and our visibility.

Well-placed links are great blog promotion. They earn page rank and high Search Engine Page Ranks (SERPS — you come up first in a search and people come to visit.) Well-placed links show readers that you are connected to what’s going on in the bigger universe of your niche and offer readers additional content elsewhere on a subject they’re already interested in. Readers don’t forget who helps them to find information. They have little time, and there are so many blogs. The folks that you link to don’t forget the visitors you sent their way either.

Making links — tangible and intangible ones — is important in tangible and intangible ways. They are the web that makes the Internet strong. They bring us together and make us more than a single voice shouting alone.

How many links have you built this week?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Want Liz to help with your link building strategies, click on the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.