How To Link Words In 5 Easy Steps

Tired of feeling like you have to write navigational directions to get someone to see your work?

Wish you could link the words instead, like this?

Well, it’s easier than you think.  Here’s how to link (or hyperlink) words in 5 easy steps.

Step 1) Write the text.

Step 2) Select or “highlight” the words you want to be underlined, or “linked.”   This will become your “anchor text”, which I write about more later in this post.

Step 3) Click the Link button to pop open the “Insert/edit Link” window.  Most of the time, it looks like chain links.  And it usually only becomes “click-able”, or active, after you highlight words.

Step 4) Paste or type in the location of the “target page.”  This is also referred to as the “Link URL”, “URL”, or the “page address.”  (Generally, you can leave the other fields in that dialog set to their default.)

Step 5) Click “Insert” in the Insert/edit link dialog.  And you just made your first hyperlink!

Now isn’t that easy!! 

Bonus Tips

Bonus 1) What if you made a mistake and need to change the URL?  No problem.  The easy way is to highlight your text again, then click the Link button and change the URL (steps 2, 3, and 4).

Bonus 2a) What if you need to change your anchor text to fix a misspelled word?  Just move the cursor (that blinking thingy) where you need to, and start typing.

Bonus 2b) WARNING: This trick is AWESOME!  Let’s say you want to type at the end of the link to extend the anchor text.  The problem is that you can’t put the cursor at the end (outside of the link) and start typing because it won’t be linked.

Instead, put your cursor between the “r” and the “d” in “Card” and start typing.  Booyah!

A great example is if you wanted to change “Card” to “Cards”.  Before it was a PITA.  Now it’s easy!

Bonus 3) The technical aspects of a hyperlink.  This is almost always auto-generated for you, but it’s still very useful information.

1. Tag Elements (open, middle, close)
2. URL
3. Anchor Text

Bonus 4) Everyone wants to rank in 1st position on Google.  There’s millions of opinions on how to do this.  But the technique that literally everyone agrees on is that a link from my website to your website will improve your rank when someone searches on the words I use in my anchor text that points to your site.

Which leads me to this: Don’t ever ever EVER use “click here” as your anchor text.  It’s worthless.

How About a Link?

I know this subject is very, very basic.  But it’s something I had to figure out.  I’m betting I’m not alone.

So if you thought this article was useful, could you practice your new found skill and link to this article?

Thanks, Ashley