In their guidelines for pitching op-eds, The Guardian newspaper offers this advice:

Open journalism is all about seamlessly knitting our own reporting with the wider network of information beyond. For this reason, links are an essential part of writing for the web; you should aim to include several in every blog entry.

The internet is awash with rumours, gossip and inaccuracies, which makes credibility all the more important to our readers. Links are helpful in lending extra credibility to your blogs. Writing about a government report? Link to it. Quoting the prime minister? Link to the source. Referring to old news stories? Find the link. The more you can show the workings of your research, the better.

Anchor Text Best Practices

Anchor text, which is often blue and underlined, is the text that is hyperlinked on a page. It should describe the linked resource to make it clear to both human and machine users what kind of page they’ll be taken to if they click the link. When possible, anchor text should:

• make sense on its own and be part of a larger sentence
• be no more than a few words
• be unique. It's confusing for both human and machine users if different links are described using the same text

Use accessibility principles to optimize your links for screen-readers and text recognition software.

Making a Hyperlink

Modern word processors make creating links easy. First, highlight your chosen anchor text and use the keyboard command Ctrl + K (⌘ + K on a Mac). Then, once a dialog box appears, paste the URL of the site you wish to link to, and select 'Apply' with your mouse, or hit the return key. In most cases, the anchor text's color will change blue to indicate there is a link. Always check your links (by clicking on them) as part of your final editing process.