How to cite sources in a blog post: links, source lists and formal styles

By Thomas Lovas Lokoy · Published 16 October 2026 · 7 min read

Shelves of old leather-bound books — Photo: Books Library by Thomas Kelley · CC0

To cite sources in a blog post well, you need less ceremony than an academic paper and more discipline than most blogs show. A reader should be able to see, at the point of each claim, where it came from, and reach that source in one click. This guide covers when a citation is needed, the two practical ways to do it on the web, how the formal style guides handle web pages if you need them, and the link settings that matter.

Why cite sources in a blog post at all

Citations do three jobs. They let readers check you. They credit the person whose work you are using. And they show that the post rests on something more than your say-so, which is what Google's guidance on helpful content points at when it mentions "clear sourcing, evidence of the expertise involved" as signs of trustworthy content.

There is also a line you should not cross. Google's spam policies describe abusive scraping as including "republishing content from other sites without adding any original content or value, or even citing the original source". Citing a source does not make copying acceptable, but failing to cite one makes legitimate use look like copying.

What needs a citation

Cite anything a reader could reasonably ask "says who?" about:

Numbers. Statistics, prices, dates, percentages, survey results.
Quotations. Any words that are not yours.
Specific claims of fact that are not common knowledge in your audience: what a law requires, what a study found, what a company's policy says.
Ideas, frameworks or methods you learned from someone else, even when you have reworded them.
Images, charts and data you did not create.

You do not need to cite your own experience, your own opinions or general knowledge your readers share. Mark opinions as opinions, though, so they are not mistaken for findings.

Quote, paraphrase or summarise

The Purdue Online Writing Lab distinguishes the three ways of using a source:

Quoting: "Quotations must be identical to the original, using a narrow segment of the source."
Paraphrasing: "putting a passage from source material into your own words."
Summarising: "putting the main idea(s) into your own words, including only the main point(s)."

All three need a citation. Purdue advises that "quoting should be done only sparingly", and that is good advice for blogs too. Quote when the exact wording matters, such as the text of a rule or a striking phrase, and paraphrase the rest. Copy quotations exactly from the source you opened, never from another article that quoted it, and never quote from memory.

Method one: inline links (the default for blogs)

For most blog posts, the right citation is a link on the words that make the claim, close to the claim. This is the web's native footnote and the format readers expect.

Do it well:

Link the claim, not a vague word near it. "Google's SEO starter guide says link text tells users and Google something about the page you are linking to" is better than "Google says link text matters (source)."
Make the link text descriptive. GOV.UK's guidance on links says to "avoid generic text like 'click here' or 'more'" and to "frontload it with relevant terms". Google's SEO starter guide makes the same point from the search side: link text "tells users and Google something about the page you're linking to."
Link to the specific page, not the homepage. GOV.UK puts it plainly: "link to a specific page, not the website's homepage."
Link to the primary source. If an article reports a figure from an official body, find the official page and link that. A chain of articles quoting each other is how wrong numbers spread.
Name the source in the sentence when it carries weight. "According to the Chicago Manual of Style's citation guide" tells the reader something before they click.

Method two: a sources list at the end

Inline links can be lost if pages move, and a long post can bury them. A short "Sources" section at the end, listing each page you relied on with its title and a link, gives readers one place to check your work. It also gives you a checklist when you review the post later.

Use both: inline links where the claim is, and a sources list at the end. Only list pages you actually read. A sources list padded with pages you never opened is worse than none, because it signals checking that did not happen. The fact-checking routine starts by opening every listed source, for exactly that reason.

When to use a formal citation style

Most blogs do not need APA, MLA or Chicago. If your readers are students, researchers or professionals who expect one, or your post may be cited in academic work, a formal style earns its keep. The official guides describe each system:

APA (author-date). Each source has an in-text citation and a matching reference list entry. The in-text citation gives the author and year; APA's guidance is to "use only the year in the in-text citation, even if the reference list entry contains a more specific date." Works with no date use "n.d.", and works with no known author are cited by title and year. For three or more authors, APA uses the first author's name plus "et al." in every citation.

Chicago. The Chicago Manual of Style offers two systems. In notes and bibliography, sources are "cited in numbered footnotes or endnotes"; in author-date, they are "briefly cited in the text, usually in parentheses, by author's last name and year of publication", with a full reference list. Chicago's quick guide gives this example of a web page with no date:

Yale University. n.d. “About Yale: Yale Facts.” Accessed March 8, 2022. https://www.yale.edu/about-yale/yale-facts.

The guide notes that when a page has no publication or revision date, you use "n.d." and add an access date, or cite an archived copy instead.

MLA. MLA entries are built from what the MLA calls a template of core elements, "facts common to most sources, like author, title, and publication date", assembled in a set order and including only the elements that apply. For an article on a website, MLA's examples show the author, the article title in quotation marks, the website name in italics, the publication date and the URL.

Whichever you choose, pick one and use it consistently across the blog. Mixing styles post by post looks careless.

Link attributes: when a citation should not pass endorsement

Most citation links are ordinary links, and should be. Google's documentation on qualifying outbound links describes three attribute values for the exceptions:

rel="sponsored" to "mark links that are advertisements or paid placements".
rel="ugc" for user-generated content links, such as comments and forum posts.
rel="nofollow" when "other values don't apply" and you would rather Google not associate your site with, or crawl, the linked page.

A citation to a page you are criticising, or one you cannot vouch for, is a reasonable case for nofollow. Google's SEO starter guide advises: "make sure you trust the resource you're linking to", and suggests a nofollow or similar annotation when you do not. Any link you were paid for, including in a sponsored post, should be marked sponsored.

Keep citations working

Links break. GOV.UK's guidance on external links says to "plan how you're going to maintain the link." On a blog, that means:

Check links when you review a post. Put review dates in your content calendar and test every link on each review.
Prefer stable pages: official guidance, documentation and standards pages over news items and social posts.
Note the date you read pages that change, such as prices or policies, and say so in the text.
Use an archived copy if a source disappears and you still rely on it, as Chicago's guide suggests.

A short checklist

Before you publish, run through the post once for citations only:

Every number, quotation and specific factual claim has a link or a named source.
Every link goes to the specific page, and that page says what you say it says.
Every quotation matches the source word for word.
Link text describes the destination.
Paid links are marked sponsored.
The sources list contains only pages you opened.

If you brief a writing tool, ask it for the same standard: a sources section of pages it actually read, and no claims it cannot attribute. The briefing guide covers how to say that clearly.