Introduction
Links are references to a URL. By clicking on a link, we can access the URL’s contents. Links may point to a file or more commonly, to a page on a website. Links are used because they make accessing and navigating websites easy.
In this tutorial, we will be learning different ways to add links to a WordPress site. There are many so if you need to add a link in a specific way, be free to jump to that section.
With that let’s begin.
Adding Links in WordPress Posts or Pages
Links can be placed in WordPress Posts and Pages. The process for doing so is similar. In our example, we will be adding the link to a post.
From the admin dashboard, hover over “Posts”. Click “Add New”.
It will redirect to the new post’s block editor.
Type the text you will use as a link. This is called an anchor text.
After doing that, highlight the anchor text and click on the “Link” icon (or alternatively, press CTRL+ K).
A small window will appear, prompting for the URL of the link. Type the URL. In this example, we will link to “www.wordpress.org“. Click “Submit” after. (You may want to add more content, so feel free to do that.) When you’ve done all that is needed, publish the site.
There’s an button which allows you to toggle whether you want the link to open on a new tab or not when the anchor text is clicked.
Here’s what the text looks like in a published post.
That’s it. We now know how to add links to WordPress posts and pages.
Copying and Pasting a URL onto the Anchor Text
We can also add a link in a post or page by copying a URL, highlighting the text that will be used as an anchor text, and clicking paste.
In the example below, we copied the URL of “wordpress.org”. Publish the changes to the site.
Here’s what the page looks like when published.
Adding Links in WordPress Text Widgets
Links can also be added to text widgets.
From the WordPress admin dashboard hover over “Appearance” and click “Widgets”.
You will be redirected to the “Widgets” page.
Under “Available Widgets” look for the “Text” Widget. (Note: the widgets are arranged alphabetically so it should be easy to find). After doing that, assign the text widget to a Widget Area. In the example below, we will assign it to the “Blog Sidebar” Widget area.
A small window will appear. This is where we fill in the Text widget’s details. The widget behaves similarly to a post’s or page’s block editor.
Give the widget a title.
To place a link, we enter the text in a text area, highlight the text and then we click the “Insert/edit link” icon (alternatively. we could have just pasted the link onto the Anchor text).
Type the URL to be used in the link. In this example, we will use “www.wordpress.org“. Click “Apply” after.
Click “Save” to apply the changes.
Finally, click “Done”.
Here is what the widget looks like on a post or page.
Adding Links in WordPress Navigation Menus
We can also add links in a menu. From the admin dashboard, hover over “Appearance” and click on “Menus”.
This will redirect to the “Menus” page. Once there, create a Menu. In our example, we will create a Menu and name it “Links Menu”.
After the menu is created, click on the arrow beside the “Custom Links” tab, found under the “Add menu items” section. Fill in the “URL” and “Link Text” field. Click “Add to Menu” when that is done.
The link menu item will appear inside the “Menu structure” section.
After that, choose a display location. In this example, we will choose the “Top Menu” location. Click “Save Menu” to apply.
We will add more links to the menu
Here is what the menu looks like on a page
Adding Link Buttons in WordPress Posts or Pages
We can also use a button as a link in a post or a page. For our example, we will place it in a post.
From the admin dashboard, hover over “Posts” then click “Add New”. You will be redirected to the post’s block editor. Once there, click on the “Add block” button.
Search for the “Buttons” block. When you find it, click on its icon.
This will create a button in the block editor. Click on the button then type the text you want embedded on it.
Click on the “Link” button. Type the URL in the “URL” field. In this example, we will type “www.wordpress.org“. Click “Submit” after. Publish the post to see the changes.
Here is what the button looks like on a page.
Embedding Linked Content in WordPress
Embedded links are also possible in WordPress. They can be embedded in post or pages.
To embedded a link, just paste a link in the post’s or page’s block editor . In our example, we will embed a Twitter tweet.
(Note: if a post cannot be embedded, a message will appear saying so).
This is what the embedded link looks like when published.
Adding Titles and Nofollow Attributes to WordPress Links
WordPress also allows us to add titles and nofollow attributes to a link.
To do that, create a normal anchor text in the post’s or page’s block editor.
Highlight the anchor text, then, click “More Options”.
You will see a menu. Click “Edit as HTML”.
We will see the text, including the anchor text, in its tag form.
We will add the following attributes:
title="Anchor Text Title"
rel="nofollow"
Code language: JavaScript (javascript)to the opening “a” tag as seen in the image below:
Publish the site when ready. In the image below, you can see the title attribute we added when hovering over the link.
Adding Affiliate Links in WordPress Posts or Pages
We can also add affiliate links in WordPress. These are links that point to purchasing products in external sites. In this tutorial, we will use the ThirstyAffiliates plugin. Before we can proceed, you need to install and activate the plugin.
Installing the ThirstyAffiliates Plugin
From the admin dashboard, navigate to the “Add Plugins” page and search for “ThirstyAffiliates”.
Click on “Install Now” in the plugin’s section.
Click “Activate” to activate the plugin.
A new menu item will appear – “Thirsty Affiliates”.
Using the ThirstyAffiliates Plugin
Creating an Affiliate Link
From the admin dashboard, over “ThirstyAffiliates” then click “New Affiliate Link”.
You will be redirected to the “Add Affiliate Link”.
Fill in the link title and URL.
Configure the link’s settings in the “Link Options” section.
Click “Save Link” to save the affiliate link.
Using an Affiliate Link in a WordPress Post or Page
To use the affiliate link, a post or page needs to be created or edited. On the post’s or page’s block editor, type the anchor text to be used for the affiliate link.
Highlight the text and click “More rich text controls”.
Choose “Affiliate Link”.
Type the title of the affiliate link. In this example, the title of the affiliate link is “An Affiliate Link”.
Click “Apply” after.
Publish, the page when ready. The image below shows the affiliate link in a published post.
Manually Adding an HTML Link in WordPress Posts or Pages
We can also add a link manually using the “a” html tag. To do that, navigate to a post’s or page’s block editor. Once there, click “Add block”.
Search for “Custom HTML”. Once found, click on its icon.
We can then write a link by creating an “a” tag. In the example below, we will link to “www.wordpress.org“.
This is what the link looks like in a published post.
Adding Anchor Links in WordPress Posts or Pages
WordPress also allows the addition of anchor links (these are links that point to a specific part of the same page). In this example, we will use a post. To create an anchoring link, use the Custom HTML block in a post’s or page’s block editor.
Type the anchoring text and enclose it within the opening and closing “a” tags. However, instead of a URL, we will place a string following this template:
#elementIDCode language: CSS (css)This means that if the element’s id attribute is “header-one” the string we will place in the “a” tag’s “href” attribute is “#header-one”.
In our example, we will anchor the link to an html element with the “an-element” id.
After creating the anchoring link, we will make an element and give that element an “id” attribute with the value of “an-element”. In our example, the element we created is a header.
Publish the post or page when ready.
The image below shows the anchor link in a published post.
Adding Social Share Links in WordPress
We can also add Social Share Links. We need to use a plugin to do this. We will use the Shared Counts plugin.
Installing the Shared Counts Plugin
From the admin dashboard, navigate to the “Add Plugins” page. Once there, search for the “Shared Counts” plugin.
Install the plugin.
Then activate.
Using the Shared Counts Plugin
To add social share buttons, we need to configure the plugin first. Hover over “Settings” and click “Shared Counts”.
This will take you to the “Shared Counts” page. This is where we configure the plugin.
Scroll down to the “Display” section. This is where we configure the plugins display options. In this example, we chose to go with most of the default settings. However, we chose to display the social share links after the post content.
Now when we a view a post, we will see the social share settings after the content.
Conclusion
In this tutorial, we learned that there are different ways to add links to WordPress. Now we know them. We can now apply them to real world scenarios. That’s it.
