9 Linking Best Practices for Content Creators

Many freelance writers—especially those who are just starting out their freelancing careers—often don’t understand the best (hyper)linking practices. Hyperlinking is when writers insert a clickable link that serves as a digital reference, and this is a common practice and expectation for content creators. Because content writers don’t always understand the best linking practices, editors often have to focus many of their revisions on fixing hyperlink issues. Sometimes, if the edits required are substantial and would take too much time, the editor instead provides comments for the writer, and the writer is then required to revise. Oftentimes, writers have to do this before they receive compensation for their writing. This usually means they are not paid for the time they have to spend revising, especially if they are paid per word/project. 

To avoid this scenario, content creators need to familiarize themselves with best hyperlinking practices. For those freelance writers creating content for businesses with competitors and/or specific expectations, some of these practices can be vaguely contradicting and therefore confusing. Writers can sometimes feel like there is a hush-hush mentality surrounding some of the ethically murky practices, but they should be able to understand these contradictions to approach hyperlinking practices as ethically as possible while avoiding the need for hyperlink revisions. 

If you are a content creator, here are the hyperlinking best practices you should follow when creating content: 

Backlink to your sources 

My blog post “Plagiarism is an Issue of Ethics” discusses the ethical reasons that all shapes of writers, including content creators, should cite their sources. Backlinking—linking readers back to another website’s webpage via hyperlink—is considered the best method for citing web-based sources, as this allows a reader to go directly to the source of the words or ideas with the simple click of their mouse. 

If you are a writer, backlinking is a great way to give credit to others for their words or ideas and to help readers understand the support for and foundations of your words and ideas. Backlinking improves the webpage’s SEO score, too: backlinking to credible sources adds credibility to the page, and earning backlinks from other websites also beefs up the page’s credibility (the process can be reciprocal: pages can earn backlinks by giving backlinks). However, the practices for linking to sources can be complicated for content creators. 

Provide backlinks to sources, but…don’t link to competitors 

Content writers are sometimes put in a difficult position where they feel like ethics must be compromised. As discussed above, linking to sources of words and ideas is the most ethical practice. However, content creators on a time crunch who are asked to write about topics unfamiliar to them might find themselves researching sources from their clients’ competitors. 

Linking to competitors’ content is problematic, and most clients (or middleman, like content vendors) simply won’t allow it…for good reason. Imagine that you are a reader in this scenario: You are researching realtors. You have found a realtor’s blog (this is the agent who happens to be your—the writer’s—direct/indirect client), and you begin reading one of their posts. You click on one of the post’s hyperlinks about how hiring an agent can save you money. This link takes you to another agent’s site (this is the place where the writer, who knew next to nothing about realtors, initially sought information to write the blog post), and rather than going back to the previous realtor’s site, you continue to read the other agent’s blog. Their blog post convinces you to hire them, so you give them a call. ←As you can see, linking to competitors is a good way to inadvertently make the clients lose money. (But what will probably really happen before this happens is this: the editor and/or client will be unhappy with the piece, which will result in negative consequences for the writer.) 

So: why would a content creator even seek out content from a competitor? If a content writer knows nothing about real estate but is asked to create content for a realtor—for example, an article “The 7 Best Reasons to Hire a Miami Realtor”—they might Google “the best reasons to hire a Miami real estate agent,” and this search will yield results from their client’s competitors. If you are in this situation, you will be tempted to look at these sources, and these sources can serve as a great way to quickly familiarize yourself with the topic or get some inspo. However, you should never directly copy competitors, and you shouldn’t create uncited paraphrases of the content, either; rather, you should do your own research and add your own value to the topic. With time constraints, this situation can get sticky (especially since some content will be considered common knowledge to certain industries), so I’ll be releasing a future post that deep-dives into this exact topic. Stay tuned! 

Provide relevant links

Readers want relevant content, too, but many writers who are trying to link directly to their sources don’t always provide this (nor can they, for the reason mentioned above). Imagine that you are a reader. If you are reading an article called “The 10 Best Products to Use When Doing Laundry,” do you really want to click on a hyperlink only to be taken to another article called “The 8 Best Laundry Products”? Readers are usually compelled to click on a link because they think it is going to take them to a page containing more specific or alternative content that isn’t available on the page they are currently reading. They don’t want to be taken on a journey through various articles about the # best laundry products. This means that if you are writing an article about laundry products, it might be a good idea to include links to the specific products, pages containing more information about the products, product reviews, or other more-specific info. Here is an example:

FunkAway sells a laundry booster that effectively eliminates extreme odors. ←Notice that the link takes readers to the specific page containing the product, where they can learn more about it. Here’s another: A podiatrist’s review of shoe deodorizers calls FunkAway Odor Eliminator Spray an “excellent product that actually works.” ← This link takes readers to the podiatrist’s review, should they be interested in seeing the podiatrist’s other recommendations. 

Continuing on with the laundry article example: It’s worth noting that if your client is actually a company that makes or sells laundry products, they’ll probably want you to link readers to their relevant products or to content pertaining to those products, so keep this in mind. Context is important when determining relevance. It’s often a good idea to ask yourself: “What would the client want?” Clients (or middlemen, like content vendors) can make this clear in their instructions/guidelines, but sometimes you’ll need to figure it out on your own. (You can always ask, too.) 

Use SEO anchor text

Using search-engine optimized anchor text will help the content receive a higher SEO score, which means it will rank higher in search engine searches. Anchor text is the text that contains the hyperlink and is usually visually different from the surrounding text.

For example, here is a link to Moz’s article on best practices for creating anchor text. ←See what I did there? I used the text anchor text to link to an article on anchor text. By the way, the Moz article is great and discusses four best practices writers should use. The first is making sure that your anchor text is succinct. (Lengthy anchor text might not help readers understand what they will find when they click on the link.) The second is making the text relevant to the page being linked to. (Word relevancy will help readers understand where the link will take them.) The third is avoiding the use of too many keywords. (Google’s algorithm is designed to sniff out bad practices, like keyword stuffing, and using too many keywords in anchor text might yield punishments from this and other algorithms.) The fourth is ensuring that the text is specific and not generic. (Generic anchor text, like click here, won’t help the SEO score.) The Moz article provides some useful tips and the different types of anchor text, so check it out! 

Use internal links

Using internal links—links to pages on the same (the client’s) website—is also good practice. This encourages readers to seek out other content on the website. If you are a content creator writing for a client, vendor, or agency, they probably have expectations regarding internal links (e.g., “provide at least two internal links”). Even if they don’t, linking to relevant content on the website is a good idea. Remember the internal link I provided in the section on “Link to your sources”? That was intentional: go read that post (after you’re finished reading this one, of course). 

Use in-page links meaningfully

In-page links—links to specific sections on the same webpage, which are also called anchor links—can be useful, but these should be used sparingly. Here’s an example of an anchor link: click the following link to move back up the page to the section on providing relevant links. ←This anchor link is not following agreed-upon best practices for using in-page links. Most experts do not recommend including these links in the middle of the page, especially since many people find in-page links to be confusing because hyperlinks are supposed to take one to a new, separate page and not the same page. If you clicked on the in-page link above, you were probably annoyed to be taken back up the page, from where you had to scroll back down. Links should enhance the UX (user experience), not disrupt it. This is why in-page links shouldn’t be used haphazardly.

So when should they be used? For long-form content, in-page links can help readers to navigate the page. Best practices described in Nielsen Norman Group’s article on in-page links include making these links visually distinguishable from other hyperlinks, only using them with long-form content (i.e., not with short content), using them in a table of contents for providing readers with direct access to content of interest, and using top of page in-page links to help readers navigate quickly from the bottom to the top of the page. 

In-page links can improve SEO, as can be showcased in search results pages, intrigue more readers, and drive more traffic to your webpage.

Don’t mislink

Mislinking means “linking incorrectly.” In this context, think of it as linking to content that is in no way connected to its anchor text. 

Writers can do this accidentally (which is why editors are supposed to check links). However, writers can also do this intentionally as a way of manipulating their readers into believing that what they have written is backed up with evidence. In such a case, the page they provide a link for doesn’t actually contain the support they have written about.

Let’s say a writer says something like, “Funkaway products are preferred by 83% of households,” and they provide a hyperlink to an article about Funkaway. The problem: the article doesn’t contain that statistic. That is considered mislinking: the readers will think the article contains the statistic and will either 1) believe it and be misled or 2) click the hyperlink, fail to find the statistic, and determine the writer’s content is untrustworthy. Mislinking damages ethos.

Avoid broken links

Broken links—links that don’t work—are very frustrating for readers, and these can also damage a page’s SEO score. Sometimes, broken links are caused by the writer accidentally mistyping a link or only including a portion of the link. Other times, pages might disappear from the internet. Writers can’t be held responsible for the latter, but this is why it can be a good idea to link only to sources that are reliably static (i.e., sources that you know won’t disappear from the internet tomorrow) unless you have a good reason for linking to sources that might be deleted. For example, linking to specific products (like the FunkAway laundry detergent booster mentioned above) is potentially risky, as the company could stop selling that specific product and the page could disappear from their website. However, linking to this product in an article about the best laundry products is justifiable, as doing this will help readers find the exact product. Should the article remain popular, updates can be made if broken links happen. 

Follow specialized guidelines 

Content creators are bound by in-house vendor/agency/client guidelines when it comes to creating content, and this includes hyperlinking. Employers can and do have specific expectations when it comes to hyperlinking, and sometimes, those expectations can be at odds with the best practices outlined above. For example, some clients might only want internal links on their pages (and not external links). Some content vendors might expect writers to link directly to primary sources (e.g., studies) rather than to popular sources (e.g., online news sources). Paying close attention to your employer’s and/or client’s expectations is crucial for preventing hyperlinking mistakes that could lead to the need for (potentially unpaid) revisions. 

I hope you enjoyed this blog on the linking best practices for content creators! Look for future posts that delve deeper into each specific linking best practice.