Naming Links

You can use one of two formats.

1. If you are going to use an in-line link, make the link descriptive to what you are linking to.
Example: For more information, you can visit the Penn State Home page.

In this example the link is named in a meaningful way to tell you where the link is taking you but also flows well within the sentence.

2. You can list the link outside of the sentence itself.
Example: For more information, you can visit the Penn State home page. Penn State Home

In this case, you also want to make the link name something meaningful to where the link takes you, not just the URL. The difference here is that the link name itself is not constrained to making the sentence flow well.

Example: More information on Penn State's Admissions statistics can be found at the following link: Admissions Statistics for Penn State

In this case, we lead with "Admissions Statistics" in the link name due to the way users of assistive technology search for links. If they read that sentence and know that they want to find enrollment statistics, and they are already on a Penn State web page, a larger percentage of uses just assume the Penn State involvement in the statistics, therefor they will use the links shortcut key and press the first letter of the expected link name, which in this case would be A for Admissions statistics. If we lead the link name with Penn State, they would not be able to get to the link quickly and would have to listen through all links until they heard the link that states enrollment statistics.

In all cases, you will want to be sure to include the title attribute for the link (title="Penn State Home"). This will in most cases match the link name shown if that name properly states what the link points to.