Digital immigrant

I’m sure I don’t need to evangelise the concept of one writer or blogger linking to others. I’m sure that many of you know that linking = good. It’s a great way to add depth to an article and you’re also helping to sustain the internet linking community. So I’ll touch on a related topic, which should be one of those Blogging  fun-DOH-mentals. It’s something that schools should teach. It’s so easy –link unto others as you would have them link unto you. Good linking “sends people away to keep them coming back.” Linking also helps our readers to tailor-make their internet reading adventure, sorta like those 1990s choose-your-own adventure books that I loved.

Link to the idea, not to the person

It’s frustrating when I’m reading your post on oh, I don’t know, 50 Ways to make your colleagues love you more effectively, and you mention something interesting but you neglect to link to the article, Youtube video, or Tweet. Instead of doing this you link to the person who wrote the article, posted the Youtube video, or wrote the Tweet. This means that I need to do a quick Google search for the relevant piece. It’s not a great user experience for me. Help me to save time and I’ll be devoted to you. I’ll proselytise and evangelise your website or blog simply because I like to think of myself as an information curator. And I love sending people links to stuff that’s useful. Let’s hope your site is next.

Another reason why this is a good idea is that it promotes deep-linking. But this places some responsibility on you the blogger — ensure that the site allows deep-linking and that your readers will go to the exact page you had intended them to go to.

Link only when needed

You don’t need to link to every single name, idea or Youtube video; only link to those that would benefit your readers the most. Gratuitous links to your blogging buddies only benefit them, unless their websites offer such amazing thought, content and entertainment value that you have to link to them. A link to an A-list blogger might get you noticed — they, too, check their stats. Practise restraint when linking out try to keep it fun and informal. No need to cite MLA or The Chicago Manual of Style; be as informal or formal depending on the type of writing you do.

Keep the reader’s flow at a constant level

Sometimes you’re writing a rant or a stream of consciousness piece of writing that doesn’t need linking to others. Then you don’t need to link. Unless you want to add more depth to your writing.

Use original link text

‘Click here’ tells your reader nothing about where the link will take them. Tell the readers something about the destination by using link text that describes where the new link will take them. You don’t need to know much about HTML to do this, either; most blogging platforms — I use WordPress — help you to format correctly. And there are many web tutorials that you can use to learn HTML. I used W3Schools and love it. It’s so useful to know HTML, even if it’s just the basics.

Underlining does not belong in internet documents

Your users will want to click on the underlined text and be disappointed when they realise it isn’t a link to a site that’ll solve all their problems. And there are many other linking practises that you want to embrace or stay away from.

Please, no links to categories

Big online newspapers are the ones guilty of this. I am sure that it has some benefits for both the newspaper and for its readers. But which is better –  newspapers linking to categories within the text or our [learning how to] using the search box ourselves. Because that’s what these categories are. I’d rather that they, like blogs, use drop-down category boxes.

Twitter replies

This doesn’t really belong in my list. But I’m gonna touch on it regardless because I see so many people who are unaware of the convention. Twitter allows you to reply to a tweet by clicking on ‘reply’. This applies to all Twitter clients, even to cellphone applications. Please use it. It helps to keep tweets in context, especially when you’re replying to one of my tweets. And then I don’t need to reply with a ‘huh?’ to your tweet. This function didn’t work on 13 November but Twitter has fixed it since then.

One link to rule them all

So you’re writing about your company, blog, new book on Amazon, etc etc etc. One or two links to it is OK; anything more is overkill. Trust me, I saw the first link. I saw the second link. And my eyes are hurting from looking at the 435 other links in your blog post/article. Less is definitely more in this instance.