Links That Work
I'm always surprised by the number of links that I come across that are not clickable, often because they are not properly formatted.
If people who see your links on websites or in emails can't click on them, then clearly they are less likely to learn about what you do.
Just Copy and Paste
On some websites, you just need to paste a web address into a form for the link to be active. For example, when adding a link to Facebook, you cut and paste the URL for the page you want people to visit. Once you paste the address, the link will be active and people can click on it.
Formatting Links in HTML
On other sites, you need to format a web address in HTML for the link to be active. You can manually write-out the HTML code for a link, or click the link button that's often available in the menu bar to automatically generate the code for you.
If the HTML code for your link is the following:
<a href="http://greatdance.com">http://greatdance.com</a>
The displayed clickable link for readers will be:
http://greatdance.com
If the HTML code for your link is the following:
<a href="http://greatdance.com">Great Dance</a>
The displayed clickable link will be:
Great Dance
The important point is that for each application you use--blogs, YouTube, social networking sites and others--you'll want to test your URLs to ensure that they work properly.
Including Links in Your Emails
With most email software/applications, you can cut and paste web addresses into the body of your emails. And these links will be automatically clickable by recipients.
But the addresses won't always be clickable if you leave out the "http://" portion of a web address. The proper way to paste my URL into the body of an email is:
http://greatdance.com
And not
greatdance.com
These guidelines for pasting URLs into email messages usually work whether your email client is in text or HTML mode, but not always. So if you're in HTML mode, you can always use the link creation button to properly format the web addresses that you want to be clickable.
Creating a link in Google Gmail:
Posted by
Doug Fox on March 18, 2009 7:30 AM
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