This question, in a roundabout way, was raised by Seb on Twitter this evening.
And the answer, somewhat inevitably, is “it depends”. And that’s where I come in.
All web pages should, with a few exceptions, contain links. This is what makes them web pages and not just documents that have been put on the internet. The act of linking from one page to another via highlighted text is what makes the web a web. It adds value to your text by, in essence, embedding content from elsewhere into words. For example, I can type the word hyperlink and by linking it to a dictionary definition save myself the bother of explaining what it means, freeing me to get on with my writing. Another example might be a web page that described a load of cool videos on YouTube. I could describe and summarise each video or I could link to them allowing you to see them for yourself. This is like the difference between telling somebody about that great movie you saw last night and handing them a DVD you happened to have in your bag. Or something.
So yeah, linking is great. You should all do it all the time. But how much should you link?
The first question you should consider is how important are the things you’re linking to. As a rule the more important the less links. Here’s an example. Now, I like D’Log. He’s one of the best bloggers in the region for cultural subjects with a hint (only a hint) of academia and he really understands the medium well, so when over the summer he decided he didn’t have time to do proper blogging and would just post weekly digests, and when I saw the results in my feed reader, my heart sunk.
It’s all fascinating stuff, no doubt, but it would take me an hour to go through it at least. This is overkill. To much choice, not enough curating. Thankfully he appears to be back at work and normal service has resumed making his posts a great example again. Take this post, a text book example of good short-form blogging. Starts with a link, follows it with an illustration, a bit of commentary, a quote and, in the final description, a contextual link to a person mentioned, should you want to see more of her work. By only having two links he’s telling you those links are important and worth visiting. If he were to fill the post with explanatory links for everything their impact would be lessened.
Linking as a way of emphasising is an interesting one as it puts the act in the same arsenal as bold and italic. This is the thing that I want you to think about as you read on, it says. Similarly, when in the middle of your flow you mention something or someone that you think is important but not important enough to derail into an explanation, a link will show that it’s important, and this is the clever bit, even if they don’t follow the link.
Years ago I remember Diamond Geezer trying out a service that let him see how many clicks his links were getting and bemoaning that a significant number of them weren’t clicked on at all. (When DG tracks back to here perhaps he can inform us of the specific post as I’m having trouble finding it in his extensive archives!) He put so much effort into researching which sites to link to and we, his ungrateful audience, didn’t even bother to click on them. But I’d argue that even if hardly anyone clicks on the links they still have an importance. Here’s a good example of a DG post with loads of links. You know, if you’ve been reading him for a while, that they’re all good value so you might check out one or two but the main reason you’re there is for DG’s writing. His links are, I guess, more like traditional footnotes or a bibliography, adding value by their presence but not requiring you to actually click on them. Compare that to D’log’s weekly roundups. They both have the same number of links but one requires you to follow them while the other offers them as an optional extra.
I did say this was complicated, didn’t I…
If you read my personal blog at peteashton.com you’ll notice I split my blogging into two types. Posts, which have titles and tend to be long and rambling, and Links which are short and serve to send you somewhere else on the internet. There are overlaps and gray areas, obviously, but the distinction is hopefully useful. In the Posts any hyperlinks are there to add some optional value to my writing. In the Links my writing adds some value to the hyperlinks. I could scatter hundreds of links through one of my 2,000 word rambles and it wouldn’t matter one iota if you clicks on none of them but in order to get any value out of my Links you have to click and if I give you too many Links of a morning you’re possibly going to resent having to do that much work. Which I why, though I can come across loads and loads and loads of cool things online I’m quite selective about what I put on my blog.
So, in summary, you should link and link often, but in moderation, depending on the context of the post and the importance of the links, and whether you actually want people to follow them or not.
Make sense?
(And if you really have too much stuff to link to get a Tumblr blog. Works for me.)
That post you remembered is here. It’s not as good, or as relevant, as you remembered, sorry.
Yes, the links I scatter across my posts often best resemble footnotes, so I don’t have to tell readers things they can find out elsewhere. And they’re also links to the sort of background information I might want to read more about myself, so I hope my readers will find it just as interesting.
But it’s still true that the great majority of links (unless heavily flagged) are still woefully underclicked. People have far too much to read these days as it is, without opening up windows more of the stuff.
One other great use of linking, of course, is that I notice you’ve written about me :o)
Just a note to say that I’m editing an interview to go online and needed to decide when where in the interview to add links (I think I was over-linking if there’s such a word). So I popped over here and checked out this post, which has answered my question. Cheers.