How to Put Links in Your WordPress Website
Many times, you’ll find yourself in the situation where you need to create a web page with lots of links to other websites. Maybe you’re writing an article for a publication, and you need to link to some of the most influential blogs in your niche. Or, maybe you’re writing a review of a product and you need to link to various websites containing detailed information about the product. In all these cases, you have the problem of not enough real estate on your own website to effectively display all the links you need to include.
Luckily, WordPress makes it easy to solve this problem by allowing you to put links in your web pages using an embed code. An embed code allows you to display a link in a larger location on a website, usually in the form of a small square containing the link text and a few other pieces of information like the link destination. The advantage of using an embed code is that you don’t have to worry about the limited real estate on your own website. Simply copy and paste the embed code into the location on your website where you want to display the link, and you’re done!
There are various sizes available for the embed code, so if you have a smaller area to work with, simply pick the smallest size available. For example, if you’re limited to 100 words on your blog post, pick the 100×100 size.
You’ll note that when you paste a link using an embed code, the link is surrounded by brackets like this:
(This is a link)
The Differences in Appearance
Now, let’s compare the appearance of a normal link to that of an embed code. A normal link appears like this:
When you paste it into a blog post or website, it will look like this:
Notice how the two look exactly the same. You can do this with most links you encounter on the web, be it a social media platform like Twitter or a news website like The New York Times.
On the other hand, when you paste an embed code into a blog post or website, it will look like this:
embed code
Note the different appearance of the embedded link compared to the normal one. The advantage of using an embed code is that it automatically includes the title and description of the linked website. The content between the <!– and –> tags in the above example is optional. You can add more content between those tags if you’d like by adding more blocks like this:
- <!– This is a link
- –>This is a link
The best part about using an embed code is that it automatically includes the URL of the linked website. For example, if I paste this code into a blog post:
- <!– This is a link
- –>This is a link
- www.mywebsite.com
Then my blog post will look like this in a browser:
- <!– This is a link
- –>This is a link
- www.mywebsite.com
If I didn’t add any other content between the <!– and –> tags, my post would look the same as the above two examples. But if I added more content like this:
- <!– This is a link
- –>This is a link
- www.mywebsite.com
Then my blog post will look like this in a browser:
- <!– This is a link
- –>This is a link
- www.mywebsite.com
You’ll notice a few other differences between these two HTML elements, which are pretty key when it comes to SEO. For one, normal links don’t have any character restrictions on the URL, so it can be any word or phrase.
In contrast, embed codes can only have 256 characters, which means it can only contain letters, numbers, and spaces. This makes it much more restrictive and easier to manage when it comes to SEO. Secondly, normal links don’t need to be directly linked to a homepage, while embed codes must be. For example, let’s say I have a product review blog, and I want to link to a comparison of various ballpoint pens. Normally, I would just type the following into a blog post:
Then I would probably expect my visitors to find the linked article by following the above link. But what if I want to make sure that they actually go to the homepage of the website I’m linking to? Normally, I’d just type the following into the post:
But with an embed code, I’d need to add a special tag:
wp:embed {“blog_title”:”Blog article”,”content”:null,”related_articles”:[]}
If I didn’t add any other content between the <!– and –>tags, my post would look like this in a browser:
- <!– This is a link
- –>This is a link
But if I added this:
- <!– This is a link
- –>This is a link
- www.myreviewsite.com
Then my blog post will look like this in a browser:
- <!– This is a link
- –>This is a link
- www.myreviewsite.com
You’ll notice that in both cases, the link is surrounded by brackets, indicating that it is an embedded link. But in the second case, the link is actually contained within the content, so you don’t have to click on it to visit the website. This makes it much easier to navigate for visitors.
The last key difference between these two HTML elements has to do with how search engines like Google perceive them. When Google encounters a normal link, it sees this as a simple and free-range way to navigate to another website. So it will treat it no different from any other URL.