Today’s Lesson
Recently I read an article (don’t remember where, so I can’t give credit to the author), about including links in your posts, in order to prevent someone from plagiarizing your content. In the event, someone copied your content, they would also be copying the links. Makes sense.

By linking to previous articles, you may increase what’s called the “stickiness” of your site. That just means your readers may stick around longer, by clicking on those links you’ve provided.

Today’s Assignment

Create a link in a post. You can either write a new post, or update an old post.

To create a link is pretty easy. I will explain how I do links, using WordPress.

If you want to link to a previous article of yours, and you’re not using a split screen/browser, get started on your post. When you get to the spot where you want to insert the link, click on “Save and Continue Editing”. or “Save”. (either way, your current post will be in “your drafts”, which are listed at the top of our “write post” page)

Click on “view site” (at the right side of your blog name), and you will be taken to your site.

Find the article you want to link to (either by doing a search or looking at your “recent posts” or “articles”, or “archives”. Click on the article. The URL for the article will show in your search bar. Right click on the search bar, and the name of your article will be “highlighted”. Click “copy”.

Now, go back to your “write post” page, and click on the article you’re working on. Click on “code”, and then,

Place your cursor and left click where you want to insert the link.

Click on “code”, and then click on “link”. A small link screen will open, and it will read “http://……………………”. Place your cursor on that “link” and hit “paste”. Now the link screen, should read “http://nameofyourpost.com/”

Now, you need to “name” your link.

After the: http://nameofyourpost.com/type in the name of your post

Now, very important, close the link. All HTML elements are closed with a backslash. So to close this link, hit “/a” and WordPress will close your link.

You could open another “tab” for your blog (so you have two instances of your blog open at once), and toggle between the two. This may save a little time.

I have also used the “back” button.

But…….creating links by using the Firefox Split Browser Extension, is the easiest. See (Blogging Just Got Easier) and install the Firefox Browser Extention. This way, you are working with two instances of your blog, side by side, and grabbing links is a piece of cake.

Now, if you forget to close the link, when you preview the post, everything you typed after the end of the link will be underlined or bolded (depending on how your links show in your post).

If that happens, the fix is easy.

Just go back to your “code” page. Find the end of the link (which is at the end of the “name” of your link), and “hand insert” the closing /a including the <>

At this point, you may also have to add a “space”.

Save and Continue Editing, and preview again. If it’s right, give yourself a pat on the back. If it’s not, go back to your code page, and see where you may have messed up.

Remember to check your links. If you click on your link, does it take you to the page your linked to?

Would you rather have that link open in a new window? That’s just a matter of adding a little bit of code. See how it’s done, by reading a previous article of mine (How To Create A Link In a New Browser).

Keep in mind, in WordPress, all links get added to your “code” page. If you accidentally add the link information to your “visual” page, when you preview the article, the “code” will be showing, and no link will have been created.

This is another easy fix. Just highlight your “code”, right click, hit “cut”, then go to your “code” page, and follow the previous instructions on how to get your link inserted.