hackbash

Interesting blog post yesterday from BBC News editor Steve Herrmann, essentially asking “how should we link?” As Herrmann points out, the BBC has always provided relevant links – something I think is essential to good web journalism – but to date it hasn’t seemed comfortable bringing them into the body copy. That’s where the majority [...]

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I don’t know. Seems I’m still feeling pissy about the polluting effect of SEO on content. While Google News seems to have temporarily extinguished Autobulbs Direct, a host of similar sites are cropping up in its results, blabbering on about how the weather could delay prestige car hire customers (people) or how British commercial vehicle [...]

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[NB - I broke the images in this post. Sorry.] I’ve been banging on about hyperlinks a bit lately, but they’re a pretty important part of writing online. Done well, embedding links within your copy can provide context, give a route to further reading, or even act as punctuation or emphasis. Taken together, the benefits [...]

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Just the other day I was singing the praises of the humble hyperlink, but today I’m reminded that perhaps not everyone gets it. For example, I’m breaking the Top Gear website’s terms and conditions by including a link to them in this sentence. Why? Because they prohibit third-parties from linking to any part of the [...]

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For all my protestations that there’s no great secret to writing for an online audience, after a few months in the job I’m beginning to notice a couple of more subtle differences in the way that it’s possible to use language when writing for the internet. One area where this keeps coming up is with [...]

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