The First Links Worth Adding to Anything You Publish

A link is not a decoration. It is an answer to a question the reader just asked in their head. Put it anywhere else and it is noise.

Here are the moments where a link genuinely helps — and how to write them.

1. Right after you name a specific place

If you write "we stayed on the quiet side of the island," nobody can act on that. If you write "we stayed at a specific property in the quiet north," the reader immediately wants to see it. That is the moment.

2. Right after you give a price range

Money makes people concrete. "Rooms in this area ran roughly what a mid-range hotel in a major city runs" is the sentence that turns a dreamer into a shopper. Link there.

3. Right after a comparison

"Villa or resort," "north or south," "week one or week three." Comparisons end with a decision, and decisions end with a click.

4. In a short, honest summary box

At the end of a guide, three lines: where to stay, how to get there, what to book ahead. Link each one. Readers who skim to the bottom are the readers closest to booking.

Where links do not belong

• In the first sentence, before you have given anything.
• Fifteen times in one article. It reads as desperate and it trains people to ignore you.
• On a homepage when you talked about one hotel. Send them to the thing you actually described.
• Anywhere you would feel uncomfortable explaining the link to the reader's face.

The test: remove every link. Is the article still worth reading? If not, fix the article, not the links.

Say what the link is

Write one plain line: "some links here are affiliate links, which means I may earn a commission if you book, at no extra cost to you." People are not annoyed by affiliate links. They are annoyed by being handled.

Disclosure also builds the exact thing you need most. A reader who knows you earn a commission and clicks anyway is telling you they trust you.

Practical starting point

Pick your single best existing article — the one that already gets read. Add two links, both in the moments above. That is it. Then watch clicks for two weeks before touching anything else.

You can grab your links inside Travelpayouts, and if you are still fuzzy on tracking, read how a travel affiliate link actually works.

Disclosure: links to Travelpayouts on this page are affiliate links. If you join through them, Empire Experience may earn a commission at no cost to you.