The WordPress editor makes adding and removing links in your content easier than ever. There are three main ways to add links to a post or page, so let’s look at all three.

Adding links in WordPress

Adding links to external content

In the toolbar of the WordPress editor is a dedicated button to add a link to your content. You can see it in the diagram below highlighted in red.

link-toolbar

Place your cursor at the point in your content you want to insert a link and click this button to open a basic link dialogue. This dialogue provides a text field to enter your link, and a second text field to enter the text to display. This allows your link text to be different from the link itself.

link-modal-1

Below the text fields is a check box titled “Open link in a new tab”. If this is checked, any time a user clicks on your link, it will open the link in a tab separate to the one they are viewing your website in. This is a good idea for links to sites other than your own as it ensure a user does not lose your website when viewing other content.

The shortcut method

If you already have text in your content you wish to add a link to, WordPress allows you to highlight the text and simply paste a link from the clipboard. WordPress will keep the text you have highlighted, but convert it into a link as indicated by it changing colour and having an underline beneath it.

Adding links to existing content

You can also add links to your existing content by selecting “Or link to existing content”. This will expand the dialogue to show suggestions on which content to link to. You can add a search term in the search field as required, select your content and the links and text will be filled for you.

link-modal-2

With existing content, it is usually best to not open these links in a new tab for good user experience.

Editing links in WordPress

If you wish to edit a link already in your content, you can place the cursor anywhere on that link and click the pencil icon. This will open the same dialogue as mentioned in the adding link section above. From there you can make the necessary changes as needed and update your link.

Removing links in WordPress

To remove a link in WordPress, just like editing, place your cursor anywhere in the link, and select the remove link button as show in red in the image below.

link-modal-remove

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Written by Archie  |  3 April 2020