Links are what separates the web from other media. If you want to use your website to its full potential, you should be using high-quality links to share high-quality resources with your visitors.
Actually use links. It can be tempting to just give directions: "Click on..., then click on..." There are a lot of reasons why this isn't a good idea (it takes longer, can get confusing, etc). Whenever you can, link straight to the information.
Write useful link text. The words that are linked should describe what you're linking to. For example, instead of saying "Click here to contact me and I'll help you out", say "Contact me and I'll help you out." Sometimes you can use the title of the page or document you're linking to. Sometimes, you'll have to re-write your sentence so that it has a good, short phrase you can use as a link.
Warn visitors when linking to something unusual. If you link directly to a PDF file, a Word file (.doc), or anything else that isn't a webpage or an image, warn your visitors. You may also want to warn visitors if what you're linking to is a really big file. For example:"Mr. Nielsen's Guide to Websites (PDF, 4MB) is very dry reading."
Don't underline or turn blue any text that isn't a link. On the web, underlines and the color blue universally mean "this text is a link", even if you don't use both. Any time you turn text blue or underline it when that text isn't a link, you are probably confusing and frustrating your visitors.Only link to truly great resources. How many links have you clicked on that took you to a page that didn't really help? Or, how many times have you followed a link to a page full of ads? This is your chance to make a difference. On your site, only link to sites that are high quality, helpful resources.
(If you don't know how to create a link with School Center, you can follow the steps I've written or School Center's Advanced Content Editor tutorial, or you can contact me and I'll help you out.)
Photo credit: Chain Link Fence by clairity
David Nielsen
Apr 17, 2008 2:15 PM
An education law blog has <a href="http://www.schoolhousegate.org/2008/04/another-bullyin.html">an example of poor usage of links</a>.
The blog author uses tinyURL and doesn't make a link, when he should have used the actual web address as a link. Readers should be able to hover on the link to see the web address at the bottom, and click the link to go there. Now they have to copy and paste the tinyURL to go to the site, and they have no way of knowing where the tinyURL will take them.
David Nielsen
Apr 17, 2008 2:16 PM
If only our blog tool had comment previewing or documentation on how to make links. : )