Hyperlinks are what everyone on the internet calls "links". Links are an essential part of the World Wide Web and are used to connect everything together from web page to web page and web site to web site. They are used in menus, within web pages, by the search engines, and even in emails. Although links have been around for many years they are often taken for granted and poorly written.
In order to better understand HTML hyperlinks and how to use them effectively we need to dissect a typical HTML hyperlink. The diagram above shows what we would see if we looked under the hood at a hyperlink in a HTML source file. The following is a brief definition for each part:
| <a |
This just tells the browser that this is the start of a HTML hyperlink tag. |
| href="http://www.mywebsite.com/" |
This tells the browser the URL (website address) the user will be sent to when they click on the link. This can be an internal link to another page within the same website or an external link to another website. |
| title="mouseover words" |
The hyperlink title is optional. It is only seen when the user places their mouse cursor over the hyperlink. It is specially useful when the hyperlink is an image button and can help search engine spiders interpret what the linked page is going to be about. Adding a specially designed title to every hyperlink tag is a good idea <hint! hint!> |
| Click here... |
These are the words users will see and is often referred too as "Anchor Text". The text words used here are extremely important to both your website visitors and to the search engine spiders. If you think about it, the words used here tell the website visitors what to expect if they click on the link. The words used here are often referred to as: "trigger words". The search engine spiders also use these words to help determine what will be on that linked page. |
| </a> |
This tells the browser that this is the end of a HTML hyperlink tag. |
The real success of any hyperlink are with the words you use. The words need to be relevant to the page or website you are linking too and should help the web visitors understand what to expect if they click on the link. The words are also used by the spiders and can definitely help boost a web pages organic (free) ranking position within the search engine results if they are relevant to the page being linked, are repeated throughout the linked page and are used in the search phrase by the user at the search engine. To be continued in a future post. :-)
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