Have you ever imagined the Web without hyperlinks? That would be unthinkable, wouldn’t it? This guide on hyperlinks is essential to any businessperson. Guide on hyperlinks because adding reference links in your presentations or reports or white paper is an excellent way of promoting understanding. It is also a great way to provide legitimacy to any report or presentation.
In this guide on hyperlinks, you will learn almost everything you need to know about how to create hyperlink in different environments or documents.
What is a hyperlink?
Hyperlinks – also known as hyperlink computing, a hyperlink, or a link – are those clickable links that establish excellent connections between one page and another or one slide and another, link to external sites, and so much more.
A hyperlink is a particular, unidirectional reference to data that you can follow by tapping or clicking on an external website or webpage, an entire document, or a specific element within a document. A Guide on hyperlinks is a text with hyperlinks. And the text that it is linked to is known as ‘anchor text.’
Hypertext is the text which contains links to other texts, and they are not necessarily linear texts linked to other texts through hyperlinks. The term ‘hypertext’ was created verbally by Ted Nelson, an American philosopher.
The most widespread hypertext system today is the World Wide Web or the Web. And on the Web, hyperlinks are generally implemented via the use of markup language HTML in order to link to web pages and other resources.
A hyperlink connects websites; it enables site operators to bring internet users to their content online. It also links to recommended subpages or sources with further information.
But Guide on hyperlinks are not limited to the internet. Hypothetically, you can insert hyperlinks into any electronic document, including email messages, presentations, texts, and even tables that you have created using Microsoft Office.
The document that contains a hyperlink is referred to as its source document. For instance, in an online reference work such as Google, many terms and words in the text are hyperlinked to definitions of those terms. Hyperlinks Guide on hyperlinks are also used in order to implement reference mechanisms like footnotes, tables of content, glossaries, bibliographies, indexes, and letters.
Hyperlinks can be bidirectional in some hypertext, i.e. they can be followed in two directions. This makes both ends to act as anchors or targets. More complex hyperlink arrangements exist, including many-to-many links, etc.
What is the effect of following a hyperlink?
The effects of the following hyperlinks vary with the hypertext system. And sometimes, it may also depend on the link itself. For example, most Guides on hyperlinks on the World Wide Web cause the target document to replace the document that is displayed quickly.
However, some hyperlinks are marked to cause that target document to open in a new tab – or sometimes, a new window. Another possibility is known as transclusion; here, the link target is a document fragment that easily replaces the link anchor in the source document.
It is not only the individual browsing that document that will follow Guide on hyperlinks. The hyperlinks will also be followed automatically by several programs. Programs that traverse the hypertext follow each hyperlink and even gather all retrieved documents are known as crawlers or Web spiders.
Read on to find out how to create hyperlink as well as the options available for integrating links.
Types of links and what they mean to search engines
Hyperlinks with distinct functions are used to link website pages. Internet users have established different types of links over the years, and this is now common. There are mainly two types of hyperlinks: internal hyperlinks and external hyperlinks.
Internal hyperlinks refer to links between a domain’s subpages. External links, on the other hand, connect different domains
Human users primarily use internal and external hyperlinks to navigate sites. The crucial benefit of hyperlinks, within the context of SEO (search engine optimization), emerged when Google bots were created. Search engine crawlers also use hyperlinks to develop sites and also evaluate connections to other sites.
And for a long time, hyperlinks became the major criteria for a site’s rating. This is a fact that made the links critical for search engine rankings.
But today, the vital importance of Guide on hyperlinks has been considered or treated as relative. Modern search engine algorithms now make use of multiple ranking factors to present online users with the most relevant and vital results for every search query. All the same, the backlink profile and internal linking are still crucial for search engine optimization.
Internal Hyperlinks
The clean organization of internal hyperlinks in a web project is known as the link structure. Link structures are primarily based on essential observations. The #1 goal is to direct the flow of web visitors through the site in an orderly fashion. This is known as ‘click paths.’
Click paths always have a particular purpose, e.g. eCommerce stores want to sell goods, attract subscribers to their newsletters, or generally encourage visitors to take part in a sweepstake.
Click paths involve a combination of steps that web visitors must complete to reach the goal intended by the website owner. This may not include switching from one URL to the other. Click paths typically lead to several or multiple pages.
Possible structures for internal linking include:
- Tree structure
- Linear structure
- Star structure
- Network structure
External Hyperlinks
External links include every link from one site to another website. Each link between 2 domains is either an incoming hyperlink or an outbound link, depending on how the website operator sees it. External links are generally used as recommendations or references for additional content.
Outbound links are those links on your own site that links to another domain’s website resource. Even though Google has denied that outbound links have a positive and direct influence, it is practically undoubtedly that outbound links can have any negative impact on the ranking of a website.
Any website with too many unnatural outbound hyperlinks is in danger with the search engines. This is because these links may be classified as spam and the site may eventually be penalized.
The Other Types of Links
The following are other types of links:
Anchor
An anchor hyperlink is a link that is bound to a portion of a document, which is generally text, although not necessarily. For example, an anchor hyperlink may be a hot area within an image – e.g. image map in HTML – which is a designated and often irregular part of an image.
One particular way to define an anchor hyperlink is via a list of coordinates that show its boundaries. For instance, a political map of Asia may have each country hyperlinked synergistically to additional information about that particular country. A separate – but invisible – hot area interface allows for swapping labels or skins within the linked hot areas without repetitive embedding of hyperlinks in the numerous skin elements.
Inline links
An inline link is one that displays remote content without the dire need for embedding the content. The remote content may readily be accessed with or without the user selecting that particular link.
Inline links display modified versions of the content. For example, instead of an image, a low-resolution preview, a thumbnail, a crossed section, a magnified section, or a thumbnail may be shown.
The entire content is then generally available on-demand, just as the case with print publishing software, for instance, with an external link. This gives room for smaller file sizes as well as faster responses to changes when the full linked content is not required, just as the case when a page layout is rearranged.
Fat ink
A fat link – which is also referred to as an extended link, a multi-tailed link, or a ‘one-to-many’ link – is a hyperlink that results in multiple endpoints. This link is a multivalued function.
Email address
A hyperlink to an email address launches an email program already installed on your computer. This link will open a blank message in the default email program using the email address inserted in the ‘To:’ line of the email.
Format URLs as Hyperlinks
Microsoft programs like Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook automatically convert URLs into hyperlinks.
As you well know, Microsoft Word – which is also known as MS-WORD – is a graphical word processing program. It is also part of the MS Office developed by the tech giant, Microsoft. Its #1 purpose is to help in creating documents such as letters, assignments, tests, brochures, quizzes, and others.
While you create documents in MS-Word, you can easily link the text to a page or a website by creating hyperlinks. Moreover, Microsoft Word automatically creates a hyperlink for you after you type a URL and press the ‘Enter’ or space bar keys.
Here’s how to create a hyperlink in an MS-Word document:
Step 1: Select the picture or text to use as a hyperlink.
Step 2: Next, click the ‘Insert’ and select ‘hyperlink.’ You will see ‘Links’ and something that looks like a chain link and an arrowhead pointing downwards. Click the image and a small drop-down menu pops up, showing ‘Hyperlink,’ ‘Bookmark,’ and ‘Cross-reference.’
Step 3: Then, carry out the following steps:
- To link to a particular place within a document, click ‘this document.’ Then choose the specific location for the link, e.g. to a particular heading or top of the document.
- To link to a file or Web page, click ‘web page of file,’ and within the ‘address’ box, enter a URL or press ‘Select’ to browse to a file.
- To link to a blank email message, click ’email address.’ And then enter an email address as well as a subject for the message.
A quick tip: You can change the screen tip which appears when you rest your pointer over the hyperlink by clicking ‘Screentip’ and then type the text. If you don’t specify any tip, MS-Word makes use of the address or path of the file as the tip.
Step 4: Tap ‘OK.’
You can follow the same steps when creating hyperlinks in Excel, Outlook. All Microsoft Office products make use of underlined text in blue color as the standard format for hyperlinks.
How to Create Hyperlink with an Anchor Text
The following steps will show you how to create hyperlink that is user-defined:
Step 1: Select the particular text you want to use as the anchor text for your link. And of course, you can also make use of an image as an anchor.
Step 2: Then, select the ‘Insert’ tab located in the menu bar and click on ‘Link.’ You can also make use of the ‘Link’ button within the context menu. The shortcut for this particular action is CTRL + K.
The Microsoft Office program will pop open the ‘Insert Hyperlink’ window. This is where you can easily or quickly configure all the settings for your link.
The anchor text you select will be presented as the ‘Text to display.’ And it can even be changed if that is necessary.
Step 3: This is where you get to define the destination of the link. Here are several options that are available to you:
- File on your computer: Under ‘Link to:’ click on the ‘Existing File or Web Page’ button. Then select the path to the file sitting on your computer.
- A live website: Click on the ‘Existing File or Web Page’ button which is under ‘Link to:’ Then enter the URL of the site you want to link to under ‘Address.’
- Link to a new email message:
- Text in a different document: Click on the ‘Existing File or Web Page’ button which is under ‘Link to:’ Then search for the file whose content you wish to reference. Click on ‘Bookmark…’ and then select the desired slide or cell or bookmark.
- Text within the current document: Click on the ‘Place in This Document’ tab under ‘Link to:’ And then select the slide or cell, and the bookmark you wish to link to.
Step 4: Confirm settings by clicking on ‘OK.’
Take note that although this section focuses primarily on how to create hyperlink in MS-WORD as an example, the click path for this particular function is practically the same with all Microsoft Office products.
How to edit hyperlinks
You can edit the hyperlinks you have created, especially if you discovered an error or two that you’d like to amend. Here’s how to do it:
Step 1: Click on the link using the right mouse button.
Step 2: Then select ‘Edit Hyperlink…’ within the context menu.
The Microsoft Office program will open up the ‘Edit Hyperlink’ window almost immediately. This window presents the same options as the ‘Insert Hyperlink’ window mentioned earlier.
The appearance of links in Word, Outlook, Excel, or PowerPoint can also be altered or modified if necessary. To do this, however, you can make use of the format functions available in the ‘Design’ and ‘Home’ tabs.
This guide on hyperlinks is a bird’s eye view of how to create hyperlink in Microsoft programs and the Web. And you are now familiar with hyperlinks and their importance to search engines.
You should, therefore, be able to make use of links for your site in order to direct your visitors from one part of your website to another. This significantly reduces bounce rates, makes visitors stay longer on your site, and take the desired action.
And all these set your website in the good books of Google and other search engines and may contribute to a rise in the ranking of your website.