When you are reading an article on a web page, have you ever noticed text that is in a different color than the rest, underlined or maybe even in a different font? These things are quite common and I am pretty sure that you have seen text like this on a website at one time or another.
I am talking about text links on websites. Text links, (also known as hyperlinks) can be found on millions of websites. Simply, a text link is a portion of the text on a website that links to another part of the same website or a different website all together. Sometimes they can be obvious by displaying the words “click here” in the text, and other times you may never know you are looking at a text link.
Why are text links used? At one time or another, someone realized that a website full of long links to other websites or other pages on the website looked messy. Aside from the clutter that links impose on a website, users do not typically pay attention to links on sidebar menus. If a user is reading an article, they are paying attention to what they are reading and not what is contained in the surrounding space on the website.
There needs to be a good way to display links on websites to relevant and important information that do not take away from the look of the website. Text links satisfy this need. Instead of seeing a long, underlined link with several characters in the middle of an article, you just see a set of words which are different in font or color than the rest of the text. Or as mentioned above, text links can be in the form of an instruction to the user, telling them to click a certain word or set of words to get more information.
Let’s look at an example. “Jane Doe has also commented on the use of artificial flowers in her article The Many Ways to Use Artificial Flowers.” Here, I have italicized the name “Jane Doe” and the name of the article that Jane Doe wrote. When a user clicks on “Jane Doe” or the name of the article, they are then taken to the article which was referenced.
Text links are used to keep the flow of the article going without a major interruption or distraction. They are a good way for a website owner to link to other pages within their own website or to other websites in which they want to reference.