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ABOUT HTML LINKS

HTML hyperlinks (or 'anchor tags') have been the cornerstone of the world wide web since its inception, allowing users to travel between web pages or sections of the same website. But there is more to them than a simple <a> tag.

Link URL

This is the URL of the website or web page that you would like your hyperlink to take people to. The link can either be external (to another website) or local (to another page or location on the same website). If your hyperlink is to an external website, be sure to include 'http://' or 'https://' at the start of the URL to ensure the link will work correctly.

Link text

This is the clickable text that will appear on your page. A good piece of hyperlink text should be descriptive of what the hyperlink is pointing to. Avoid generic terms like 'Click here' and 'Read more', which tell the user little about what the hyperlink is leading to.

ADVANCED OPTIONS

Open in

By default an HTML hyperlink will open in the same browser window, but you can optionally choose to have the links open in a new browser tab. This is sometimes preferable for hyperlinks where you wish to keep the previous website open in the background, but can cause usability issues as the user may not realise that a new tab has been opened.

There are also options available for websites which use iFrames: Parent will open the hyperlink in the browser window in which the iFrame is embeded, which Same will open the hyperlink within the iFrame. However, the use of iFrames are deprecated in HTML5, so should be used with caution.

Relationship

The optional relationship attribute can be used to describe the relationship between the currently open web page and the one that is being linked to. Valid attributes for HTML hyperlinks are:

Alternative

Describes hyperlinks which are to an alternative version of the current document, for example a version in a different language, designed for a different medium (i.e. for a mobile device) or in a different format (such as PDF or Word document).

Author

Describes hyperlinks which provide information about, or ways to contact, the author of the current document.

Bookmark

Indicated that the hyperlink can act as a permalink for the current article or section of the page, allowing people to save bookmarks to this point in the document.

External

Describes hyperlinks leading to external websites, and which when clicked will cause the user to leave the current website.

First

Describes hyperlinks which lead to the first web page or document in a lineir series.

Help

Describes hyperlinks which lead to help documentation about the current document.

Last

Describes hyperlinks which lead to the last in a series of documents or web page.

License

Describes hyperlinks leading to licensing information about the current document.

Next

Describes hyperlinks which lead to the next part of a series of documents or web page.

NoFollow

Describes hyperlinks which the owner of the current document does not have any control over and which does not wish to endorse. This is often used to indicate that there is a commercial relationship between the two (for example that it is a paid link), information which is useful for some search engines who use popularity ranking techniques.

NoOpener

Describes hyperlinks which should not provide the new browsing context access to the document that opened it. This is useful when linking to untrusted websites.

NoReferrer

This attribute prevent the web browser from passing information about the current website to the website being linked to via the 'Referer:' HTTP header.

Prev

Similar to the 'Next' attribute, this describes hyperlinks which navigate to the previous item in a lineer sequence of documents or web pages.

Search

Describes a hyperlink which points to an interface designed for searching the current document or website.

Tag

Describes hyperlinks that point to a document or web page that describes a 'tag' that applies to the content of the current page or document.

Link is a download

This option can be used to force the web browser to download the resource being linked to, rather than attempting to open in within a browser window.