Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
II
One reason is that blogging is a somewhat egotistical act—or at least it is when we do it! Perhaps
the problem is that many of us bloggers find it difficult to imagine anyone wanting to click away
from our pearls of wisdom.
Another reason is that blogging developed with many fairly tight-knit groups of bloggers who
visited one anothers' blogs regularly. Links weren't needed; it was just assumed people in a core
group had each seen what the others had posted.
However, the way people use blogs is changing. There are many
more blogs and people are busier. Many people arrive at blogs via
search engines. They won't have read any of the previous posts
to the blog they've arrived at, let alone other blogs that the blog-
ger might assume are common knowledge for his or her audience.
So links are needed now more than they were before.
The third and final reason for lack of linking is probably lack of
technical savvy. The HTML for hyperlinks can be complicated,
and it's certainly easy to make mistakes with.
Offsetting this, one of the best things about WordPress is its stan-
dardized, easy-to-use support for creating links. WordPress cuts
out some of the options, hides the remaining complexity, and
makes creating and removing links quite easy indeed.
A final reason many web publishers, not just bloggers, might
reduce their use of links is that links tend to break over time, due
to someone moving the page or piece of content you're linking to.
This is less of a problem for blog entries, which are often
assumed to have a limited shelf life, and which users won't nec-
essarily assume you're going to be maintaining. (A corporate
website, on the other hand, is expected to be perfect throughout,
and attracts derision if it falls short.)
So we recommend you set your ego aside, take advantage of WordPress's capabilities, and use links
freely in your posts. You will distinguish your blog in a very positive way if you use links, especially
if you use them in a savvy way. In the next section are our recommendations for doing just that,
and step-by-step instructions for adding links to your blog post.
caution
Only the most advanced web
page tools even try to help pro-
tect you from the knotty problem
of links breaking because con-
tent on the other end gets
moved, changed, or deleted. In
WordPress, this maintenance
work is entirely up to you.
Maintenance is less of a problem
for normal blog entries, with
their limited shelf life. However,
if you create content that's
meant to live a long time, such
as a blogroll or page of
resources—or if some of your
posts get traffic long after they
were first put up—you'll need to
regularly check the links in them
to make sure the links are still
valid.
Linking Strategy
The value of links as formatting elements in posts, and existing studies of web usability, imply a
few rules for using links effectively:
•
DO: Use links in your posts
—Links are one of the most valued elements on any web page and
people tend to avoid pages that lack them.
•
DO: Use links to highlight key points
—Linked text gets extra attention, so use links to high-
light key points, but only where this makes sense.
•
DO: Make link text short and meaningful
—The evolving style online is to only highlight a few
key words as link text. This improves the impact of the key words and enhances scannability.
