How to Hyperlink Like a Pro in 3 Easy Steps
Photo by Stephen Phillips - Hostreviews.co.uk on Unsplash
Embedding a hyperlink in your emails and social media posts is one of the quickest, most efficient, and visually appealing ways of sharing the location of a website. Whether you want to point someone to a document you’ve uploaded online, or you want to share the URL of a specific page of your site with new prospects and customers, learning how to create a hyperlink is essential. Let’s take a look at the steps below.
1) Copy the URL
The URL is the web address located in your browser bar. Simply go to the page that you want to share and copy everything in the browser bar. You’ll notice that certain URLs can be longer than others. For example, www.cnn.com is a short URL that’s easy to type out, easy to remember, and easy to share. But linking someone to a specific article within a subcategory on the site can make your URL a bit more unruly. For example, the URL to an opinion article about the environmental effects of plastic looks like this:
Longer URLs like this are too long to remember, difficult to type out, and aren’t very visually appealing, which is why it's better to hyperlink them instead.
→ Copy and paste the URL you want to share and get ready for the next step.
2) Choose your words
The easiest way to create a hyperlink is to highlight the words you want to use to represent the link. For example, if you are writing an email to a new contact telling her to download a brainstorming worksheet prior to your meeting, you might want to highlight the words "brainstorming worksheet" in the sentence below:
"Hello Suzy, one of the easiest ways to get your business off to a great start is to use this handy brainstorming worksheet to help you figure out who your potential customers will be."
By doing so, you'll make it clear to Suzy (or whoever you send your email to), that those words contain the path to that very important document you want her to look at.
→ Highlight the words you want to hyperlink and get ready for step 3.
3) Insert the link
Once you’ve chosen the words you want to use to represent your link, now all you have to do is create the hyperlink. How you do this may vary depending on what email provider you are using, but in most cases, you simply highlight your words and hold down CTRL and K at the same time (or CMD and K if you’re using a Mac). This will open up a pop-up box where you'll be asked to insert your link. Paste the URL you’ve copied into the pop-up and click “OK.”
That’s it! Your chosen words will now be hyperlinked to the web address you’ve specified and the person on the receiving end of your emails will simply have to click on the words to be taken directly to the page you want them to see.
You can use this technique to link words as well as images with any web address you’d like. Your emails and posts will come across as more polished and professional, and you'll make it much easier for the person on the receiving end to act on what you're sharing.