Google’s John Mueller replied to a question around indexing issues on a site and said that if the site is hosted on a strong platform and is technically sound, and “it’s barely getting indexed, often that’s a sign that our systems aren’t convinced about the site overall.”

John wrote this on Bluesky:

If you’re hosting your site on a strong hosting platform, in a technically valid way (which you can test for), and it’s barely getting indexed, often that’s a sign that our systems aren’t convinced about the site overall.

Just to step back, this is not new. John and Google representatives have said this before. Google spoke about being on the edge of indexing because of being on the edge of Google’s quality threshold. He has said that if you find yourself needing to often submit your URLs to the index manually, that can be a sign of quality issues. Low quality content that is not indexed is not surprising to Googlers. Pages that may be deindexed, may be deindexed over quality issues. Google has said a page needs to pass quality to be indexed. Google has been saying they do not index everything for years, Google simply won’t index all your pages and it is impossible for Google to index everything, Google said.

John then went on to talk about the type of content this site is publishing, he wrote:

These situations are always hard. If you’ve recently moved to this domain, sometimes it takes time to settle down. I wonder (without an official-Google hat on) if the strategy of creating “SEO content” lightly related to the topic of your actual business is ideal – will people really convert?

Obviously every site & business is different (looking at those reading on SER,SEL,SEJ,etc), it just sometimes feels like folks focus on building out a topic, ranking pages for the topic, when their business is actually not directly tied to random web traffic for that topic.

I guess John reads this site. 🙂

In any event – none of this should surprise any of you but it has been a while since John spoke about quality and indexing.

Here is a screenshot of this conversation, so you have the full context:

Forum discussion at Bluesky.

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Google is testing adding the site name next to the link icons in the AI Overviews within Google Search. This makes it much more likely for searchers to click on the links and click over to the source of the information.

A month ago, we saw Google testing showing author names in AI Overviews but that didn’t seem to roll out. Maybe these site name links will roll out?

This was spotted by Sachin Patel who posted on X this screenshot:

Here is a video:

Google’s AI Overview now shows the website names where the information is sourced from, and these names are clickable — when clicked, they redirect users to the original website. @rustybrick @gaganghotra_ @brodieseo pic.twitter.com/WcLH7CsZiB

— Sachin Patel (@SachuPatel53124) June 27, 2025

Here is more on how it works:

Based on my testing, it looks like the clickable website names currently appear only in the intro paragraph of the AI Overview. You can see this in the screenshots. Google might expand this feature to the entire AI Overview in future tests. pic.twitter.com/hAqrbbVYmh

— Sachin Patel (@SachuPatel53124) June 27, 2025

Here is another example:

I hope this does roll out and it will likely increase the click-through rates but it will still be lower than just the ten blue links.

Forum discussion at X.

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This post was sponsored by InMotion Hosting. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

We’ve all felt it, that sinking feeling in your stomach when your site starts crawling instead of sprinting.

Page speed reports start flashing red. Search Console is flooding your inbox with errors.

You know it’s time for better hosting, but here’s the thing: moving a large website without tanking your SEO is like trying to change tires while your car is still moving.

We’ve seen too many migrations go sideways, which is why we put together this guide.

Let’s walk through a migration plan that works. One that’ll future-proof your site without disrupting your rankings or overburdening your team.

Step 1: Set Your Performance Goals & Audit Your Environment

Establish Performance Benchmarks

Before you touch a single line of code, you need benchmarks. Think of these as your “before” pictures in a website makeover.

If you skip this step, you’ll regret it later. How will you know if your migration was successful if you don’t know where you started?

Gather your current page speed numbers, uptime percentages, and server response times. These will serve as proof that the migration was worth it.

Document Current Site Architecture

Next, let’s identify what’s working for your site and what’s holding it back. Keep a detailed record of your current setup, including your content management system (CMS), plugins, traffic patterns, and peak periods.

Large sites often have unusual, hidden connections that only reveal themselves at the worst possible moments during migrations. Trust us, documenting this now prevents those 2 AM panic attacks later.

Define Your Website Migration Goals

Let’s get specific about what success looks like. Saying “we want the site to be faster” is like saying “we want more leads.” It sounds great, but how do you measure it?

Aim for concrete targets, such as:

• Load times under 2 seconds on key pages (we like to focus on product pages first).
• 99.99% uptime guarantees (because every minute of downtime is money down the drain).
• Server response times under 200ms.
• 30% better crawl efficiency (so Google sees your content updates).

We recommend running tests with Google Lighthouse and GTmetrix at different times of day. You’d be surprised how performance can vary between your morning coffee and afternoon slump.

Your top money-making pages deserve special attention during migration, so keep tabs on those.

Step 2: Choose The Right Hosting Fit

Not all hosting options can handle the big leagues.

We’ve seen too many migrations fail because someone picked a hosting plan better suited for a personal blog than an enterprise website.

Match Your Needs To Solutions

Let’s break down what we’ve found works best.

Managed VPS is excellent for medium-sized sites. If you’re receiving 100,000 to 500,000 monthly visitors, this might be your sweet spot. You’ll have the control you need without the overkill.

Dedicated servers are what we recommend for the major players. If you’re handling millions of visitors or running complex applications, this is for you.

What we appreciate about dedicated resources is that they eliminate the “noisy neighbor” problem, where someone else’s traffic spike can tank your performance. Enterprise sites on dedicated servers load 40-60% faster and rarely experience those resource-related outages.

WordPress-optimized hosting is ideal if you’re running WordPress. These environments come pre-tuned with built-in caching and auto-updates. Why reinvent the wheel, right?

Understand The Must-Have Features Checklist

Let’s talk about what your web hosting will need for SEO success.

NVMe SSDs are non-negotiable these days. They’re about six times faster than regular storage for database work, and you’ll feel the difference immediately.

A good CDN is essential if you want visitors from different regions to have the same snappy experience. Server-level caching makes a huge difference, as it reduces processing work and speeds up repeat visits and search crawls.

Image created by InMotion Hosting, June 2025

Staging environments aren’t optional for big migrations. They’re your safety net. Keep in mind that emergency fixes can cost significantly more than setting up staging beforehand.

And please ensure you have 24/7 migration support from actual humans. Not chatbots, real engineers who answer the phone when things go sideways at midnight.

Key Considerations for Growth

Think about where your site is headed, not just where it is now.

Are you launching in new markets? Planning a big PR push? Your hosting should handle growth without making you migrate again six months later.

One thing that often gets overlooked: redirect limits. Many platforms cap at 50,000-100,000 redirects, which sounds like a lot until you’re migrating a massive product catalog.

Step 3: Prep for Migration – The Critical Steps

Preparation separates smooth migrations from disasters. This phase makes or breaks your project.

Build Your Backup Strategy

First things first: backups, backups, backups. We’re talking complete copies of both files and databases.

Don’t dump everything into one giant folder labeled “Site Stuff.” Organizing backups by date and type. Include the entire file system, database exports, configuration files, SSL certificates, and everything else.

Here’s a common mistake we often see: not testing the restore process before migration day. A backup you can’t restore is wasted server space. Always conduct a test restore on a separate server to ensure everything works as expected.

Set Up the New Environment and Test in Staging

Your new hosting environment should closely mirror your production environment. Match PHP versions, database settings, security rules, everything. This isn’t the time to upgrade seven different things at once (we’ve seen that mistake before).

Run thorough pre-launch tests on staging. Check site speed on different page types. Pull out your phone and verify that the mobile display works.

Use Google’s testing tools to confirm that your structured data remains intact. The goal is no surprises on launch day.

Map Out DNS Cutover and Minimize TTL for a Quick Switch

DNS strategy might sound boring, but it can make or break your downtime window.

Here’s what works: reduce your TTL to at least 300 seconds (5 minutes) about 48 hours before migration. This makes DNS changes propagate quickly when you flip the switch.

Have all your DNS records prepared in advance: A records, CNAMEs for subdomains, MX records for email, and TXT records for verification. Keep a checklist and highlight the mission-critical ones that would cause panic if forgotten.

Freeze Non-Essential Site Updates Before Migration

This might be controversial, but we’re advocates for freezing all content and development changes for at least 48 hours before migration.

The last thing you need is someone publishing a new blog post right as you’re moving servers.

You can use this freeze time for team education. It’s a perfect moment to run workshops on technical SEO or explain how site speed affects rankings. Turn downtime into learning time.

Step 4: Go-Live Without the Guesswork

Migration day! This is where all your planning pays off, or where you realize what you forgot.

Launch Timing Is Everything

Choose your timing carefully. You should aim for when traffic is typically lowest.

For global sites, consider the “follow-the-sun” approach. This means migrating region by region during their lowest traffic hours. While it takes longer, it dramatically reduces risk.

Coordinate Your Teams

Clear communication is everything. Everyone should know exactly what they’re doing and when.

Define clear go/no-go decision points. Who makes the call if something looks off? What’s the threshold for rolling back vs. pushing through?

Having these conversations before you’re in the middle of a migration saves a ton of stress.

Live Performance Monitoring

Once you flip the switch, monitoring becomes your best friend. Here are the key items to monitor:

• Watch site speed across different page types and locations.
• Set up email alerts for crawl errors in Search Console.
• Monitor 404 error rates and redirect performance.

Sudden spikes in 404 errors or drops in speed need immediate attention. They’re usually signs that something didn’t migrate correctly.

The faster you catch these issues, the less impact they’ll have on your rankings.

Post-Migration Validation

After launch, run through a systematic checklist:

• Test redirect chains (we recommend Screaming Frog for this).
• Make sure internal links work.
• Verify your analytics tracking (you’d be surprised how often this breaks).
• Check conversion tracking.
• Validate SSL certificates.
• Watch server logs for crawl issues.

One step people often forget: resubmitting your sitemap in Search Console as soon as possible. This helps Google discover your new setup faster.

Even with a perfect migration, most large sites take 3-6 months for complete re-indexing, so patience is key.

Step 5: Optimize, Tune, and Report: How To Increase Wins

The migration itself is just the beginning. Post-migration tuning is where the magic happens.

Fine-Tune Your Configuration

Now that you’re observing real traffic patterns, you can optimize your setup.

Start by enhancing caching rules based on actual user behavior. Adjust compression settings, and optimize those database queries that seemed fine during testing but are sluggish in production.

Handling redirects at the server level, rather than through plugins or CMS settings, is faster and reduces server load.

Automate Performance Monitoring

Set up alerts for issues before they become problems. We recommend monitoring:

• Page speed drops by over 10%.
• Uptime drops.
• Changes in crawl rates.
• Spikes in server resource usage.
• Organic traffic drops by over 20%.

Automation saves you from constantly checking dashboards, allowing you to focus on improvements instead of firefighting.

Analyze for SEO Efficiency

Server logs tell you a lot about how well your migration went from an SEO perspective. Look for fewer crawl errors, faster Googlebot response times, and better crawl budget usage.

Improvements in crawl efficiency mean Google can discover and index your new content much faster.

Measure and Report Success

Compare your post-migration performance to those baseline metrics you wisely collected.

When showing results to executives, connect each improvement to business outcomes. For example:

• “Faster pages reduced our bounce rate by 15%, which means more people are staying on the site.”
• “Better uptime means we’re not losing sales during peak hours.”
• “Improved crawl efficiency means our new products get indexed faster.”

Pro tip: Build easy-to-read dashboards that executives can access at any time. This helps build confidence and alleviate concerns.

Ready to Execute Your High-Performance Migration?

You don’t need more proof that hosting matters. Every slow page load and server hiccup already demonstrates it. What you need is a plan that safeguards your SEO investment while achieving tangible improvements.

This guide provides you with that playbook. You now know how to benchmark, choose the right solutions, and optimize for success.

This approach can be applied to sites of all sizes, ranging from emerging e-commerce stores to large enterprise platforms. The key lies in preparation and partnering with the right support team.

If you’re ready to take action, consider collaborating with a hosting provider that understands the complexities of large-scale migrations. Look for a team that manages substantial redirect volumes and builds infrastructure specifically for high-traffic websites. Your future rankings will thank you!

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by InMotion Hosting. Used with permission.

In-Post Image: Images by InMotion Hosting. Used with permission.

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Google is testing swapping the site name with the URL in the search result snippets. So instead of the site name being shown at the top of the search result snippet, Google is showing the URL above that, followed by the site name.

This test was spotted by Sachin Patel who shared these screenshots on X – here they are side by side:

Previously, Google tested removing the site name completely from the search result snippet.

Forum discussion at X.

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The most exciting moment of your new WordPress project is right at the beginning. You have an idea that one day, you hope will soon be shared with the world. But it can also be overwhelming.

WordPress has countless plugins that do pretty much everything under the sun. In fact, the WordPress ecosystem has doubled in terms of plugin submissions in 2025.

So, which ones should you use?

In this post, I will talk through how I plan to build a WordPress website.

Why You Should Plan A WordPress Site

To plan a WordPress site really is a must-do process that reduces the risk of the project spiralling in time and cost.

Spending an hour or two following a simple checklist, like the one I’ve detailed below, puts you and the client on the same page when building the website.

Time and again, I’ve seen projects that’ve undefined elements that need to be factored in, which eliminates potential scope creep.

It will also give you a list of tasks, so as well as avoiding scope creep, you can easily transfer the elements of your plan into your project management tool as tasks and milestones. That will speed up development time.

Define Your WordPress Website Goals

The first thing you should do is define the goals of the website. The easiest way to begin this process is to ask yourself the following two questions:

1. Where are your visitors most likely to come from?
2. What do you wish them to do when you’re on the website?

Assuming that the site is a brochure site, then more than likely, you’d want your visitors to come from search engines, and you want them to contact you.

That way, you’ll need a plugin like Yoast SEO or Gravity Forms.

You may have other goals, like growing a newsletter or an ecommerce store. Or you may get traffic from a social media platform that your blog needs to integrate with.

Each of these needs to be defined, as this will help define your tech stack.

Goals Defined? Great. Now, Plan The Layout

Once you’ve defined your goals, you need to think about the layout and what custom work you will need to do.

When building your site, I prefer to think of templates, rather than pages.

You don’t need a template for every blog post, for example. If you are building a website for a solicitor, for example, all services it offers (e.g., Conveyancing/Wills & Probate) could run off a similar template, cutting build time.

This is not necessarily true if you’re using a page builder, as sometimes page builders treat each individual page separately.

You could also look at custom post types and taxonomies for certain pages.

For example, if you have a “Meet the Team” page, then every person could be their own post. This makes maintenance a lot easier, as it allows a new team member to be easily integrated without too much trouble.

Testimonials work well as a custom post type as you can create a “bank” of them to use throughout the site.

Once you’ve got the structure of the site and what you are using to build it, that should be the templates.

Generally, for a brochure site with a blog and a “Meet the Team” section, you would have the following templates:

1. Home Page Template.
2. About Page Template.
3. Contact Us Page Template.
4. News Post Template (Single).
5. News Post Template (Archive).
6. Team Member Template (Single).
7. Team Member Template (Archive).
8. Catch All Template.

The “Catch All” template I find useful as it’s used for pages that are present but don’t need much design, something like a Terms & Conditions or your Privacy Policy pages.

I tend to start with these first, as you can build a header/footer easily enough here.

Finally, you may want to consider whether you have multiple languages or if you have different regional offices. A large site may be better suited for a multisite, rather than an individual WordPress installation.

Once done, you should have a WordPress theme and a WordPress plugin ready to build.

My general thought is that any WordPress functionality you wish to retain when redesigning should be in a plugin, rather than a theme.

Things like definitions of custom post types or SEO changes you make programmatically are ideal for a custom plugin.

Depending on the complexity of the project, it could mean that you split functionality into a number of plugins.

For example, I have an ecommerce site where their custom invoicing is in one plugin, and the voucher management is in another plugin. There is also the “helper” plugin that has minor performance improvements and a custom post type.

Don’t Forget The Ancillaries!

Of course, a well-built WordPress theme, with a range of custom and supporting plugins, is just the beginning. Your website needs content.

If you are a marketing agency, you may be responsible for the creation of the content, but what about imagery? It’s a good idea to define in the WordPress site planning things like who is responsible for the content.

If you are using the content of the old site, it’s a good idea to define who handles the migration, or at the very least be aware if it’s transferable – not all content systems are!

Other things to define in your WordPress site plan are training, who will have access to the site, and what level. Ideally, you want as few administrators as possible.

If you are pushing a new design to an existing site, there’s an approach of making everybody but yourself authors or editors, and see who complains about lacking access. That works remarkably well!

The First Step Comes With Experience

In reality, the more you create plans and pitches for WordPress websites, the more refined your toolset and your planning process become.

I already know the tools I’ll be using for the next 10, maybe 20 sites, with often very little variance among them. What works for a solicitor’s website will probably work for a cleaning firm.

I have a core group of about five to 10 plugins and two to three themes that I use, and then I add extra plugins as needed.

Those plugins are personal to me, but over time, you’ll build your own list of plugins. Doing so will make WordPress site planning far more efficient.

More Resources:

Featured Image: one photo/Shutterstock

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HTML links (also called hyperlinks) are some of the most important functions of the internet. Google literally relies on them to find, crawl, index, and rank pages.

Links have a lot of power, both in terms of user experience and your site’s SEO.

So, understanding how to code HTML links properly is key if you want to create links that help (not hinder) your website’s performance.

The Components of an HTML Link

You create an HTML link using the anchor element: .

You then use attributes and values to change how the link functions.

Here’s what the complete HTML code for a clickable link looks like:

<a href=”https://example.com” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>Visit Example.com for more info.</a>

Let’s break that down:

• The anchor tag (<a>) is the foundation of every link. It tells browsers “this is a clickable link.”
• The href attribute defines where your link goes. This can be a web address, a file path, or even a specific section on the current page.
• The target attribute controls how the link opens. The default is to open in the same window, but _blank makes it open in a new tab.
• The rel attribute defines the relationship between the linking page and the linked page. It’s particularly important for SEO (more on that in the best practices section).
• The anchor text is what users see and click. In the example above, it’s “Visit Example.com for more info.”
• The closing tag (<a>) indicates where the link ends.

I’ll talk more about the role these elements play later in this guide. For now, let’s look at some of the most common ways to add HTML links.

How to Add Links with HTML Code

The basic method of adding links with HTML code involves placing the URL you want to link to within a link anchor tag. Just like the example above.

But here are a few of the most common use cases for adding links in HTML:

Text Links

Text links are the most common type of hyperlink you’ll create. You can use them to link to other pages on your site (internal links) or on other sites (external links).

Here’s the standard implementation:

<a href=”https://example.com”>Visit our website</a>

This creates a basic text link that users can click to navigate to the specified URL.

You can enhance text links with additional attributes for specific use cases. For example, here’s how you would set a link to open in a new tab:

<a href=”https://example.com” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Visit Example.com</a>

If it’s an affiliate link, you might use something like this:

<a href=”https://example.com” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer sponsored”>Visit Example.com</a>

(More on these attributes later.)

Image Links to Make Images Clickable

Images can serve as powerful, eye-catching links that often attract more attention than plain text.

The basic structure for an HTML image link wraps an <img> tag inside an anchor tag:

<a href=”https://example.com”>
  <img src=”logo.png” alt=”Company Logo”>
</a>

This transforms the entire image into a clickable link that navigates to the specified URL.

The “img src” attribute specifies the location of the image file. While the “alt” attribute specifies alternative text for the image.

For image links to be accessible and SEO-friendly, you should include descriptive alt text. Like this:

<a href=”https://backlinko.com/product/camera”>
<img src=”camera.jpg” alt=”Canon EOS R6 Mark II Camera”>
</a>

The alt text serves two critical purposes:

• Screen readers will read it aloud for visually impaired users to understand the image’s content
• It helps search engines understand the content of your image (which may help you rank in image search results)

You should only make your images clickable if they actually take the user somewhere useful. Like to the image’s source website.

It’s worth noting that for image links and a few of the other types below, you might implement them in different ways.

For example, here’s how we implement some image links here on Backlinko (using CSS classes):

But here’s an image link on The Spruce:

In this case, the image link is still contained within an <a> tag. But there are other elements (like <div>) and classes (like img-placeholder) as well.

How exactly you implement image links largely depends on your website setup. If you use WordPress, your theme and plugins will likely dictate how you code your image links.

Email Links

Email links use a special protocol that launches the user’s default email client. They’re perfect for making it easier for users to reach you.

Use the mailto: protocol to create email links:

<a href=”https://backlinko.com/mailto:contact@example.com”>Email Us</a>

When a user clicks this link, it opens their default email program with the recipient field already populated.

You can enhance email links with additional parameters too. Like this:

<a href=”https://backlinko.com/mailto:sales@example.com?subject=Product%20Inquiry&body=I%27m%20interested%20in%20learning%20more”>Email Sales Team</a>

This pre-fills the subject line with “Product Inquiry” and adds initial text to the email body that says “I’m interested in learning more.”

(Note that you need to encode spaces and special characters, like %20 for a space.)

Phone Links

For phone numbers, use the tel: protocol:

<a href=”https://backlinko.com/tel:+15555555555″>Call (555) 555-5555</a>

When a user taps this link on their mobile device, it opens the phone dialer with the number ready to call.

For international phone numbers, always include the country code with a plus sign:

<a href=”https://backlinko.com/tel:+442071234567″>Call our London office: +44 20 7123 4567</a>

You can also use the “sms” value to open up a text message:

<a href=”https://backlinko.com/sms:+442071234567″>Send us a text</a>

As with email links, be clear in your anchor text for phone and SMS links about what will happen when the user taps the link.

Jump Links (Anchor Links) for Internal Page Navigation

Jump links, also known as anchor links, help users navigate to specific sections within the same page. They’re especially useful for long-form content.

If your site uses a table of contents (like this site does), it works using jump links in this way.

The basic structure requires two parts:

1. An element with an id attribute that serves as the target
2. A link that points to that id using a hash (#) symbol

For example, in our article on keyword mapping, which is a step-by-step list, we use jump links to make it easier for users to navigate.

First, we added “id” tags to the headings, like this:

<h3 id=”add-keywords”>3. Add the Keywords to Your Map</h3>

You don’t see this id attribute on the page, but it’s in the site’s code:

Then, in the second step of the list, which some users might not need to follow, we include a link to skip ahead to the third step (which has the id “add-keywords”).

The HTML link code looks like this:

<a href=”#add-keywords”>step 3</a>

And the link on the page looks like this:

When a user clicks the link, the browser will instantly scroll to the element with the matching id (in this case, step 3). It’ll also update the URL in the address bar:

Jump links are perfect for:

• Tables of contents at the top of articles
• “Back to top” links at the end of sections
• FAQ pages where users want to jump to specific questions
• Product pages with multiple information sections

Button Links for Calls to Action

HTML links over buttons combine the functionality of an <a> tag with the appearance of a button.

They’re perfect for calls to action that need to stand out and attract clicks.

The key difference between a button-style link and a regular link is that you’ll typically code HTML button links with CSS:

<a href=”https://backlinko.com/yourdomain.com/signup” class=”button-link”>Get Started</a>

This HTML looks like a standard text link, but with CSS, you can transform it:

.button-link {
display: inline-block;
padding: 10px 20px;
background-color: #0066cc;
color: white;
text-decoration: none;
border-radius: 4px;
font-weight: bold;
text-align: center;
}

.button-link:hover {
background-color: #004080;
}

These styles create a rectangular button with:

• Clear boundaries (background color and padding)
• Rounded corners (border-radius)
• Visual feedback on hover (background color change)

For mobile users, make sure your button-style links are large enough to easily tap:

@media (max-width: 768px) {
.button-link {
padding: 12px 24px;
width: 100%;
margin-bottom: 10px;
}
}

It’s worth noting that in a lot of cases, you won’t need to code button links yourself. If you’re using a CMS like WordPress, for example, you might use button templates of some kind.

Or perhaps, your developer will use CSS classes to create buttons rather than using HTML link codes.

Download Links

Download links let your users easily save files from your website to their devices.

The basic HTML for a download link uses the download attribute:

<a href=”https://backlinko.com/report.pdf” download>Download PDF Report</a>

For files that browsers typically display rather than download (like PDFs), the download attribute ensures they’re saved instead of opened.

Many browsers will download other file types by default, without the need for a separate download attribute. This is often true for things like Excel and Word documents.

Other Important HTML Link Code for SEO

There are a few HTML link attributes you should be aware of for your site’s SEO. These don’t create hyperlinks, but they do go inside an HTML link element in the <head> portion of your page’s code.

This element looks like <link> rather than <a>.

Canonical Tags

Canonical tags (technically attributes) tell search engines which version of a page is the “primary” one when you have similar or duplicate content across multiple URLs. They help prevent duplicate content issues that can hurt your SEO.

But it’s good practice to implement them on all of your pages.

You implement canonical tags using a <link> element in the <head> section of your HTML:

<head>
<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://example.com/original-page”>
</head>

This effectively tells search engines: “This page is a copy or variation of the page at the specified URL. Please attribute all ranking signals to that URL instead.”

Canonicalization can help when you have URL parameters for tracking, filtering, or sorting (e.g., ?source=email or ?sort=price).

Hreflang

The hreflang HTML link attribute helps search engines understand the language and regional targeting of your pages. This helps them understand which version of your page to display to users in search results.

As with canonical tags, you implement it using link elements in the <head> section of your HTML:

<head>
  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en-us” href=”https://example.com/en-us/page”>
  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”es” href=”https://example.com/es/page”>
  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr” href=”https://example.com/fr/page”>
  <link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x-default” href=”https://example.com/”>
</head>

These link elements tell search engines:

• This page is available in English (US), Spanish, and French
• The default version (for users speaking other languages) is at the root URL

The hreflang attribute uses language codes (like “en” for English) and optional region codes (like “us” for the United States).

Hreflang tags are only an issue for sites with different language versions and an international presence. They can be tricky to get right, so for more detailed info, check out our dedicated guide to hreflang tags.

HTML Link Code Best Practices

Following these best practices will ensure your links are effective, secure, and accessible to all users. And it’ll help improve your SEO too.

Syntax

Here’s the correct syntax for an HTML link:

<a href=”https://backlinko.com/url”>Anchor Text</a>

Here are a few syntax rules to remember:

• Always include the opening <a> and closing </a> tags
• Add the href attribute along with a value (your URL)
• Enclose attribute values in quotation marks
• Don’t use spaces between the attribute, equals sign, and value

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the clickable text of your link. It’s the words users actually see and click on. It plays a crucial role in both user experience and SEO.

Good anchor text clearly tells users what to expect when they click a link. It also provided

Here’s an example of poor anchor text:

<a href=”https://example.com/pricing”>Click here</a>

And here’s an example of good, descriptive anchor text:

<a href=”https://example.com/pricing”>View our pricing plans</a>

The second example gives users (and search engines) clear information about where the link will take them.

When writing anchor text, follow these guidelines:

• Make it descriptive and relevant to the destination
• Keep it concise (typically 2-5 words)
• Avoid generic phrases like “click here” or “read more”
• Use keywords naturally, but don’t stuff them in

Title Attributes

There’s also a “title” attribute you can add to links. But you generally don’t need this if you use descriptive anchor text.

In fact, using it can reduce readability and accessibility if it just repeats the anchor text. Screen readers usually won’t read it out, and users hovering over the link will see a tooltip that may just block other content on the screen. Plus, it won’t display on mobile devices at all.

So, unless you can meaningfully add important information about the link, don’t use the title attribute. And instead just make your anchor text descriptive.

Aria Labels

ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) labels enhance accessibility by providing additional context for screen readers and other assistive technologies.

The aria-label attribute provides an accessible name for a link when the visible text isn’t descriptive enough, or for links over icons rather than text:

<a href=”https://yourdomain.com/settings” aria-label=”Go to settings”>
  <svg><!– settings icon –></svg>
</a>

In this example, a screen reader would announce “Go to settings” but the site would only visually display a settings icon.

Target

The target attribute determines how your link opens when a user clicks on it.

The default link behavior opens the link in the same tab (i.e., you go from the current page to the linked page).

The default value is “_self” but you don’t need to specify that.

If you want to open the link in a new tab, use the “_blank” target value:

<a href=”https://example.com” target=”_blank”>Example</a>

You used to need to add rel=“noopener” to links with a blank target value for security reasons. But you no longer need to do this. (More on noopener below.)

Opening your link in a new tab is particularly useful when:

• Linking to external websites
• Providing reference material that users might want to check while staying on your page
• Linking to downloads or resources that would disrupt the user’s current activity

Opinions vary on whether this is best for accessibility. Some believe this creates a disruptive user experience, especially on mobile and for those using assistive technologies (like screen readers).

For internal links that are part of the natural navigation flow, it’s usually best to stick with the default behavior (opening in the same tab).

Relationships (rel=)

The rel attribute defines the relationship between your current page and the page you’re linking to. It’s an important attribute that affects both security and SEO.

The default behavior is to not add any rel values. But here are a few of the most common ones:

Sponsored Links

You use the sponsored rel value when another brand has paid to have a link on your site.

For example, let’s say you have an affiliate link to a product you promote.

This is a form of paid or sponsored link, because you might earn money from purchases users make through that link. Google recommends you use the “sponsored” attribute for paid link placements:

<a href=”https://example.com” rel=”sponsored”>Paid link</a>

Here’s an example of this on WireCutter, a popular product comparison website:

You would also use this attribute for links other companies have explicitly paid you to include on your site.

UGC Links

Use the user-generated content rel value on links in comments and forum posts. These are links you don’t necessarily control, and this tells Google that you don’t endorse them.

<a href=”https://example.com” target=”_blank” rel=”ugc”>External site you haven’t verified</a>

Nofollow Links

Use nofollow when none of the other rel values apply and you don’t want Google to associate your site with the one you’re linking to. Or when you don’t want Google to crawl the page you’re linking to.

<a href=”https://example.com” rel=”nofollow”>Link to a site you don’t endorse</a>

Let’s say you’re not the one creating the links on your site so you can’t verify them before they go live. Maybe you have a team of writers, or you’re accepting guest posts.

But you know the links are not sponsored or in user-generated content. In this case, you’d use nofollow.

What About “noopener” and “noreferrer”?

The “noopener” rel value tells your browser to go to the target link without giving the new location access to the page with the link.

If you’re using target=“_blank” then modern browsers will essentially treat it as if you have added noopener. But you can also use it on other links you don’t necessarily trust but aren’t using the _blank target value for. Like those you’re also adding nofollow to.

Using the “noreferrer” value hides the origin of any traffic sent through that link in the analytics of the site you’re linking to.

You can combine multiple rel values by separating them with spaces:

<a href=”https://example.com” rel=”noopener noreferrer sponsored”>Affiliate link</a>

Absolute vs. Relative URLs

When creating an HTML link, you need to decide whether to use an absolute or relative URL in the href attribute. Each has specific use cases and advantages.

Absolute URLs include the complete web address, starting with the protocol:

<a href=”https://example.com/products/item1″>Product page</a>

Relative URLs are shorter and reference locations relative to the current page:

<a href=”https://backlinko.com/products/item1″>Product page</a>

Generally, I’d recommend you use absolute URLs in most cases.

Using relative URLs can speed up production if you’re working with lots of them. Plus, if you move pages or domains but keep the same URL structure, your internal URLs should all continue working without you having to change them all to the new domain.

But honestly, unless you’re planning a major website migration at the time you’re setting up your site (unlikely), you aren’t likely to foresee and then benefit from this relatively minor advantage.

You might want to use relative URLs when working with a staging site that’s on a different domain from the site you’re developing.

In this case, it can avoid you or your developers having to rewrite all the internal links when you push your site live.

How to Check Your Site’s HTML Links

You can manually check the code of an HTML link in your browser with the inspect tool. Just right-click over the link you want to check and select “Inspect” to open up the developer console:

This is handy for quickly verifying your attributes and rel values.

But what if you want to check your links at scale?

That’s where a tool like Semrush’s Site Audit comes in.

Just plug your domain in, let the audit run, and head to the “Issues” tab. Then type in “link” to highlight any issues with your site’s HTML links.

Go through and fix any issues to improve your site’s SEO and user experience.

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Google’s John Mueller answered a question about a site that received millions of Googlebot requests for pages that don’t exist, with one non-existent URL receiving over two million hits, essentially DDoS-level page requests. The publisher’s concerns about crawl budget and rankings seemingly were realized, as the site subsequently experienced a drop in search visibility.

NoIndex Pages Removed And Converted To 410

The 410 Gone server response code belongs to the family 400 response codes that indicate a page is not available. The 404 response means that a page is not available and makes no claims as to whether the URL will return in the future, it simply says the page is not available.

The 410 Gone status code means that the page is gone and likely will never return. Unlike the 404 status code, the 410 signals the browser or crawler that the missing status of the resource is intentional and that any links to the resource should be removed.

The person asking the question was following up on a question they posted three weeks ago on Reddit where they noted that they had about 11 million URLs that should not have been discoverable that they removed entirely and began serving a 410 response code. After a month and a half Googlebot continued to return looking for the missing pages. They shared their concern about crawl budget and subsequent impacts to their rankings as a result.

Mueller at the time forwarded them to a Google support page.

Rankings Loss As Google Continues To Hit Site At DDOS Levels

Three weeks later things have not improved and they posted a follow-up question noting they’ve received over five millions requests for pages that don’t exist. They posted an actual URL in their question but I anonymized it, otherwise it’s verbatim.

The person asked:

“Googlebot continues to aggressively crawl a single URL (with query strings), even though it’s been returning a 410 (Gone) status for about two months now.

In just the past 30 days, we’ve seen approximately 5.4 million requests from Googlebot. Of those, around 2.4 million were directed at this one URL:
https://example.net/software/virtual-dj/ with the ?feature query string.

We’ve also seen a significant drop in our visibility on Google during this period, and I can’t help but wonder if there’s a connection — something just feels off. The affected page is:
https://example.net/software/virtual-dj/?feature=…

The reason Google discovered all these URLs in the first place is that we unintentionally exposed them in a JSON payload generated by Next.js — they weren’t actual links on the site.

We have changed how our “multiple features” works (using ?mf querystring and that querystring is in robots.txt)

Would it be problematic to add something like this to our robots.txt?

Disallow: /software/virtual-dj/?feature=*

Main goal: to stop this excessive crawling from flooding our logs and potentially triggering unintended side effects.”

Google’s John Mueller confirmed that it’s Google’s normal behavior to keep returning to check if a page that is missing has returned. This is Google’s default behavior based on the experience that publishers can make mistakes and so they will periodically return to verify whether the page has been restored. This is meant to be a helpful feature for publishers who might unintentionally remove a web page.

Mueller responded:

“Google attempts to recrawl pages that once existed for a really long time, and if you have a lot of them, you’ll probably see more of them. This isn’t a problem – it’s fine to have pages be gone, even if it’s tons of them. That said, disallowing crawling with robots.txt is also fine, if the requests annoy you.”

Caution: Technical SEO Ahead

This next part is where the SEO gets technical. Mueller cautions that the proposed solution of adding a robots.txt could inadvertently break rendering for pages that aren’t supposed to be missing.

He’s basically advising the person asking the question to:

• Double-check that the ?feature= URLs are not being used at all in any frontend code or JSON payloads that power important pages.
• Use Chrome DevTools to simulate what happens if those URLs are blocked — to catch breakage early.
• Monitor Search Console for Soft 404s to spot any unintended impact on pages that should be indexed.

John Mueller continued:

“The main thing I’d watch out for is that these are really all returning 404/410, and not that some of them are used by something like JavaScript on pages that you want to have indexed (since you mentioned JSON payload).

It’s really hard to recognize when you’re disallowing crawling of an embedded resource (be it directly embedded in the page, or loaded on demand) – sometimes the page that references it stops rendering and can’t be indexed at all.

If you have JavaScript client-side-rendered pages, I’d try to find out where the URLs used to be referenced (if you can) and block the URLs in Chrome dev tools to see what happens when you load the page.

If you can’t figure out where they were, I’d disallow a part of them, and monitor the Soft-404 errors in Search Console to see if anything visibly happens there.

If you’re not using JavaScript client-side-rendering, you can probably ignore this paragraph :-).”

The Difference Between The Obvious Reason And The Actual Cause

Google’s John Mueller is right to suggest a deeper diagnostic to rule out errors on the part of the publisher. A publisher error started the chain of events that led to the indexing of pages against the publisher’s wishes. So it’s reasonable to ask the publisher to check if there may be a more plausible reason to account for a loss of search visibility. This is a classic situation where an obvious reason is not necessarily the correct reason. There’s a difference between being an obvious reason and being the actual cause. So Mueller’s suggestion to not give up on finding the cause is good advice.

Read the original discussion here.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/PlutusART

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Google is testing removing the site names from the search result snippets and just showing the site’s URL at the top – title link – position of the snippet.

As a reminder, Google launched the site name feature in October 2022 for mobile and then site names for desktop results in March 2023.

Now, maybe Google will drop the site name from the mobile search results – or maybe not – it is hard to know.

This was spotted by Brodie Clark who posted about this on X and his SERP Alerts page. I took his screenshots and put them side by side so you can compare the site name version on the left to the one without it on the right:

Forum discussion at X.

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Microsoft is testing shading the site names, the brand names, of retailers in the Bing Shopping search results. So the name Amazon is in a blue shaded background color as opposed to just saying Amazon.com.

This was spotted a while back by Khushal Bherwani who posted some screenshots on X. Here is oen of those:

Now compare that to what I see:

I don’t think the shaded is needed but hey, you need to test these things, right?

Forum discussion at X.

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Google AdSense announced that the Auto optimize feature is now configurable at the site level. Google moved it out of the Experiments section and made several improvements to Auto optimize.

Google wrote, “we’ve updated the Auto optimize feature so that you can now configure it at the site level.”

Auto optimize lets Google run experiments on your ad format settings and automatically apply any improvements to your revenue or user experience. You’ll be notified when experiments finish, and you can undo any changes made, as long as the underlying settings haven’t changed since the experiment ended. If you’d like to review the results of the experiments first, you can choose to apply improvements manually instead.

These changes are rolling out over the next few weeks and when they hit, Google said they will apply your existing Auto optimize settings to all your sites. “For example, if you currently have “Auto optimize on”, your sites will also Auto optimize turned on,” Google explained.

Here is what Google said is new:

• Auto optimize has moved from the Experiments page. You now manage Auto optimize experiments on the Ads page in your AdSense account.
• You can control your Auto optimize settings at the site level. This means that for each of your sites you can choose whether to turn on Auto optimize.
• Google changed the “Suggestions only” option into a checkbox called “Auto-apply experiment winner”. Now, when you turn on Auto optimize, you can optionally allow Google to automatically apply the experiment winner for you.
• Google added an “Auto optimize” column to the table of your sites on the Ads page so you can easily check which of your sites have Auto optimize turned on.
• Going forward, when you add a new site to your AdSense site list, Auto optimize will be turned on with “Auto-apply experiment winner” selected, 50% traffic, and no blocked experiments by default. If you don’t want to use Auto optimize on your new site, you can turn it off.

Forum discussion at X.

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