Turning website addresses into clickable links

In a recent survey by Moz, leading search marketers agree that getting external links is the single most important objective for getting high rankings. This stems from the idea that external links are one of the hardest metrics to manipulate and one of the best ways for search engines to figure out the popularity of a given web page.

We have helped a number of clients through this activity and felt that it was a situation that could benefit from a little show and tell.

Here is a quick tutorial on how to edit the post or page from your WordPress Dashboard. This example shows a post being edited.

In the screenshot above, there are three web addresses referenced in the blog post. In their current state they are text only, and the reader cannot click on the links to visit the referenced web address. One component of good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the number of quality outbound links that your page contains, along with the number of quality inbound links to your page. It is a good practice that when you are referencing an external link, you make the link clickable so that both your visitors have the benefit of easily accessing the page AND the SEO crawlers see the outbound link. Below the text link we are going to change into a clickable web address is highlighted.

You can select the full url in your post by performing a text select with your mouse. Include all of the text you want to be clickable, including the “www”. Copy the text to your clipboard using Ctrl-C. Next, click the chain link icon in the post editing toolbar at the top of the post editing box. The icon is highlighted below.

Once you click the link icon, the “Insert/edit link” dialog box shown below will be displayed.

Paste the contents of your clipboard into the first entry box labeled “URL”. Usually the “http://” will already be in the box. If the text you selected does not have those characters included, you can click just past the “//” and paste your clipboard there. If the web address text you copied does have the “http” included, then paste over top of the contents of the box. The link in the box should look something like what you see below.

Note that the URL does need to have the full address, including the “http://”. Select the checkbox for “Open link…”. This will force the browser to open a new tab or window to show the web site you are referencing. We suggest that you do this so that your site visitor does not lose track of where they were on your website. Your website will still be open in the previous tab and can be navigated to easily.

Once you have completed these steps the display box on your editor should look like the one below.

Click the “Add Link” button at the bottom of the dialog box and you will return to your post editor. Now the web address you had selected shows as blue indicating it is a “clickable” link. See the sample below where now “www.Conebellafarm.com” is highlighted in blue and is clickable. Note that you cannot click it in the editor; you will only be able to click it once it is being displayed in the browser outside of the post editor.

After linking all three of the web address in the sample post, the post content area now has three web addresses configured to be clickable. Your visitors can click these links to visit your referenced sites.

Be sure to “Update” your post so that it goes live.

Hope this tidbit helps. Feel free to leave any feedback or suggestions in the comments section below.

If you have questions about the WordPress Dashboard, or how to format your blog post just the right way, give us a call or contact us. We will be happy to help you with the details, so you don’t have to.