Smart internal linking with D8 Editor Advanced Link module

The proper use of internal linking can turn any website into a powerful marketing tool. It is a vital part of effective content writing strategies. In this post, we explore why it is so, as well as review a helpful module for smart content linking in Drupal 8 — D8 Editor Advanced Link. Let’s go.

What is internal linking on websites?

Internal linking is known as the practice of placing hyperlinks inside content leading to the other relevant pages within the same domain. Internal links to content often use the keyword-rich anchor phrases. 

Why is internal linking important?

• It boosts SEO rankings by helping the search engines understand what your pages are about, offering them multiple entry points to crawl your websites, as well as increasing page authority.
• Session duration grows — users visit more pages per session, which, among other things, is an important search ranking factor.
• Internal linking enhances user engagement by offering them more and more relevant content. They simply cannot leave!
• The conversion rate potentially grows because users remain interested. They get closer and closer to making the desired conversion.

Internal linking in Drupal 8

Content links should be handy both for content editors to create and for website readers to navigate through. Of course, it’s possible with Drupal 8! 

First, creating links in Drupal 8 is handy for anyone by default — thanks to the built-in CKEditor with a link icon on its dashboard.

Second, there are also tools for creating links in Drupal 8 CKEditor that further extend the standard functionality. They are meant for more advanced internal and, of course, external linking as well. Let’s look at how this job is performed by one of them — the D8 Editor Advanced Link module.

The D8 Editor Advanced Link module

The Drupal module D8 Editor Advanced Link increases the website’s usability both for the content creators and readers in the following ways:

• Content editors and SEO managers can control more precisely from the CKEditor panel how the content links are displayed. 
• Content readers can enjoy rich links and more convenient navigation.

These content linking capabilities include:

• linking directly to exact phrases or even words on the page
• adding CSS classes
• making links open in a new or in the same window
• displaying the link’s title on mouseover
• adding relationships between the linked and the source page

“This is a super simple module that serves a very cool little purpose,” said Thomas Shean, a famous Drupal contributor, in the video tutorial about the D8 Editor Advanced Link.

The principle of the D8 Editor Advanced Link module’s work

The module provides advanced link creation by offering more attributes to be added to them. Let’s compare. The classic Drupal CKEditor has just one field for the URL during content linking:

Everything is different with the D8 Editor Advanced Link module installed. It enriches the Drupal 
CKEditor’s content linking menu with advanced attributes such as: 

• title
• class
• id 
• target 
• rel
   

The difference is amazing. More details will be discussed in the “Installation and configuration” part.

Installation and configuration of the D8 Editor Advanced Link

• Installing and enabling the module

First, we need to install and enable the D8 Editor Advanced Link module on the Drupal 8 website. 

• Preparing the text formats

Next, we go to Administration — Configuration — Content authoring — Text formats and editors and open the “Full HTML” format.

We make sure we have the “link” buttons on the active toolbar. If not, we need to drag them there. We will need them, as well as the “source” button.

We should also look at the "Limit allowed HTML tags and correct faulty HTML" filter. 

1. If it is unchecked, there is nothing else to do, since there are no restrictions in tags. 
2. If it is checked, you can add more allowed HTML tags manually (such as "title," "class," "id," "target," and "rel")

• Using the content linking attributes

When we have prepared everything, we can go ahead with our Drupal content linking. When selecting the part of the text that needs to be linked and clicking on the “link” button, we will see a form with advanced attributes that just need to be unfolded. 
 

• URL. This is the URL of the destination page.
• Title: This is the text that is shown as a tooltip when the mouse hovers over the link.

Advanced section:

• CSS classes. This is the place to add CSS classes. Multiple ones are supported, which should be separated by spaces.
• ID. This allows you to use URL fragments and lead users to a specific portion of the page. For example, you list “ID2” at the end of the URL tag after the “#” symbol. Then you should mark where the “ID2” fragment begins inside in the source code of the destination page. Like this: <p id="ID2">.

 

• Target. This is a simple check/uncheck option as to whether the links should open in a new window or not.
• Relation (rel). This is for adding relationships between the source and the destination document (e.g. “nofollow,” “noreferrer,” etc.).

Make your internal linking in Drupal 8 more advanced!

With Drupal, there are always more opportunities than you could imagine. Make your content workflows much smarter by installing the D8 Editor Advanced Link module or other modules for internal linking in Drupal. 

Our Drupal team is always there for module selection, installation, configuration, or creation from scratch!