Though I promised not to tread on Nielsen's turf, for clarity's sake, two or more links should not bump against one another, leading to readers to believe that they are seeing just one link. Nor should linked text make up more than a small fraction of the text on the page. For that reason, online writer do better to link a key word of clause within a sentence, and rarely an entire sentence, when inserting a link.
To conclude, here is my four-question test for online writers to keep in mind as they consider how, and where, to links within their stories:
1. Does the URL to which I am referring the reader reward him or her with additional content that a reader of this story likely did not know, or know how to get easily?
2. Does the text I am selecting to link this text give the reader an obvious clue as to what the hyperlinked page will contain?
3. Am I using the shortest possible amount of text to provide that clue?
4. Would the content of the linked text, or the context surrounding it, reasonably mislead the reader into believing that the linked page contains something other than what it does?
If the answers to these questions are yes, yes, yes and no, you're good to go with the link.
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