How to Link a WordPress Featured Image to an External URL

You can link a WordPress featured image to an external URL in three ways. If the image sits inside your post content, use an ordinary Image block and its built in link control. If it is the true featured image, the one your theme renders in headers and archive cards, look for a theme or plugin setting that adds a link field, or drop a short filter snippet into your site that wraps the thumbnail in an anchor of your choosing. WordPress has never shipped a native option for this, and the media uploader trick from the classic editor days stopped working years ago. This guide covers all three current methods, the original 2012 tutorial for the archive, and a frank word on when the whole idea is bad for SEO.

Why there is no built in setting, and what changed since 2012

This article started life in September 2012 as a classic editor tutorial, written in the same period our founder Mo Rafi began teaching the WordPress course at Google Campus London. Back then the answer really was simple: the old media uploader had a Link URL field. You pasted any address into it, clicked Use as featured image, and many themes of the era would dutifully wrap the thumbnail in that link.

That workflow is long gone. WordPress 3.5 replaced the old uploader with the modern media modal in December 2012, only weeks after the original post went live, and the Link URL field vanished from the featured image flow with it. Then WordPress 5.0 introduced the block editor in December 2018 and moved link controls onto individual blocks. Today the featured image is rendered by your theme template, not by anything inside your post, so where it points is decided by the theme or by code, never by a box in the media library.

In other words, the original tutorial is now a historical document. We have preserved it further down, screenshots and all, because watching the method change is half the lesson. Its companion piece from the same week, how to remove the image title popup, aged in exactly the same way.

The three current methods compared

Method	Best for	Skill needed	Watch out for
Image block link control	An image inside the post content	None	It is not the real featured image, so archive cards ignore it
Theme or plugin setting	The genuine featured image slot	None	Setting names vary by theme; a plugin adds one more thing to maintain
Filter snippet	Any theme, full control	Copy and paste PHP	Wraps thumbnails everywhere unless you add conditions

If you only need a clickable promotional image at the top of one post, the Image block wins on every count. Reach for the snippet only when the link must live on the featured image itself across templates.

Method 1: the Image block link control

The block editor solved the everyday version of this problem properly. Any Image block can link anywhere:

1. Add or select an Image block in your post.
2. Click the link icon in the block toolbar, or press Ctrl and K (Cmd and K on a Mac).
3. Paste the external URL and press Enter.
4. Open the link settings to tick Open in new tab, and add a rel value such as nofollow or sponsored if the destination is commercial.

That is the whole job, and it needs no code. The catch is scope. An Image block lives in your post content, so it appears where you placed it and nowhere else. The featured image proper is a separate piece of post data that your theme prints in hero areas, blog listings and social sharing tags. The block editor does include a Post Featured Image block for use in block theme templates, but at the time of writing its link option points to the post itself, not to an address you choose. For most promotional use cases, placing a linked Image block at the top of the post is the honest, low maintenance answer.

If you are still setting up your site and this is all new, our walkthrough on how to start a WordPress blog covers the groundwork first.

Method 2: theme and plugin settings

Some themes, and most page builders, expose a setting for what the featured image links to. Look in the theme customiser or the site editor under your blog and single post templates, and check the theme documentation for phrases like featured image link or thumbnail link. Where a native option exists, use it: it will be maintained alongside the theme and needs nothing extra from you.

Where the theme offers nothing, the plugin directory has several small plugins that add a featured image link field to the post sidebar. They work, and for a non technical site owner they are a reasonable choice. Our standing advice applies, though: every plugin is another update to track and another surface for conflicts. For something this small, the snippet below is usually the tidier route, especially if you already run a code snippets plugin.

Method 3: a small filter snippet

For full control on any theme, store the destination in a custom field and filter the thumbnail output. Add a custom field named featured_image_link to the post (in the block editor, enable the custom fields panel from the editor preferences), paste your external URL as its value, then add this snippet through a code snippets plugin or your child theme’s functions.php:

add_filter( 'post_thumbnail_html', function ( $html, $post_id ) {
	if ( is_admin() || ! is_singular() ) {
		return $html;
	}
	$url = get_post_meta( $post_id, 'featured_image_link', true );
	if ( $url ) {
		$html = '<a href="' . esc_url( $url ) . '" rel="nofollow noopener">' . $html . '</a>';
	}
	return $html;
}, 10, 2 );

Three caveats worth respecting:

• The is_singular check stops the link hijacking your blog archive cards, where readers expect a click to open the post. Remove it only if you genuinely want external links there too.
• Keep the snippet in a code snippets plugin or a child theme. Pasting it into a parent theme’s functions.php means the next theme update silently deletes it.
• The esc_url call is not optional. It keeps a mistyped or malicious field value from breaking your markup.

Posts without the custom field behave exactly as before, so you can roll this out on one post at a time.

When an external featured image link is a bad idea for SEO

Now the part the 2012 original never mentioned. Just because you can does not mean you should, and in most cases we advise clients against it.

• You are giving away your strongest click. The featured image is usually the most prominent clickable element on the page. Pointing it off site sends your hardest won visitors somewhere else before they have read a word.
• Image links carry weak anchor signals. When a link is an image, search engines fall back on the alt text as its anchor. A decorative image with thin alt text passes little context to the destination and none back to you.
• It breaks reader expectations. People click featured images expecting the post, a larger view or nothing at all. An unannounced jump to another domain feels like a trick, and trust is hard to win back.
• Commercial links need the right rel attributes. If the destination is an affiliate scheme or a paying partner, the link must carry rel sponsored or nofollow. Bake that into whichever method you use, as the snippet above does.
• Accessibility suffers. A screen reader announces an image link by its alt text. If the alt says what the picture shows rather than where the link goes, you have built a mystery door.

The sensible exceptions: a banner promoting your own sister site, a ticket page for an event you are running, or a clearly labelled partner offer with proper rel attributes. Before you hand your best placement to another domain, it is worth knowing what the page currently earns you. Our round-up of the best free SEO tools shows how to check a page’s clicks and queries without spending a penny, and the wider SEO tools hub compares the paid platforms we actually use. If you would rather work through your whole site methodically, the DIY SEO guide is the place to start.

The original 2012 tutorial, preserved

What follows is the method as we taught it in September 2012, kept for the record. None of it works in a current WordPress install. The post opened with a quote from a frustrated forum user:

How the hell do you link the featured image to the post url!? There’s not ONE tutorial online about how to do this!!?

The fix back then took three steps. First, from Posts and Add New, you clicked the Set featured image link at the bottom right of the classic editor:

Second, you chose an image through the old uploader, either dragging a file onto the Drop files here area or clicking Select Files:

Once the thumbnail appeared, you scrolled to the Link URL section, pasted the external address, and clicked Use as featured image:

The same field appeared if you pulled the image in from a web address instead, using the Link Image To box:

Or from the Gallery tab, by clicking Show beside an image already attached to the post:

Third, you published and tested the click. The whole trick rested on that Link URL field, which stored a link against the attachment that period themes then printed around the thumbnail. When WordPress 3.5 shipped its new media manager three months later, the field left the featured image workflow and the tutorial quietly expired. Fourteen years on, the durable lesson is not the button positions. It is that anything bolted to an editor quirk will break, while content, structure and links survive.

Frequently asked questions

Can I make the featured image link to the post instead of an external site?

Yes, and on most themes that is already the default on archive and blog listing pages. In block themes, the Post Featured Image block in your template has a toggle to link the image to the post. You rarely need to do anything at all for this case.

What happened to the Link URL field from the old tutorial?

It disappeared when WordPress 3.5 introduced the modern media modal in December 2012. Attachment links still exist in a reduced form for images inserted into content, but nothing in the featured image workflow accepts an arbitrary URL any more. That is why every current method involves the block editor, the theme or a snippet.

Is there a plugin that does this without writing code?

Yes. Search the WordPress plugin directory for featured image link and you will find several small plugins that add a URL field to the post sidebar and wrap the thumbnail for you. They are fine for non technical site owners. If you already use a code snippets plugin, the filter in this guide does the same job with one fewer dependency.

Do I need rel nofollow or rel sponsored on the link?

If the destination pays you in any way, through an affiliate scheme, a sponsorship or a partnership, use rel sponsored, with nofollow as an acceptable fallback. For links you simply do not vouch for, use nofollow. For a plain editorial link to a site you trust, no rel attribute is needed.

Should an external image link open in a new tab?

For external destinations we usually say yes, with rel noopener included, so readers do not lose their place on your site. Keep internal links in the same tab, where a new tab is more irritation than help.

Does an external link on the featured image hurt my rankings?

Not directly. One outbound link will not sink a page. The real costs are indirect: you lose clicks that would have gone deeper into your own site, and an image link with weak alt text wastes the placement. Measure before and after with a rank tracker or Search Console, and see our guide on how to check your Google rankings for the clean way to do that.

Fourteen years of the same question

The question in that 2012 forum quote still gets asked every week, which is why this page earned a rebuild rather than deletion. The answers change; the need does not. Luckywebs has been on both sides of that churn, from teaching WordPress at Google Campus to building the fast static sites and SEO campaigns we run today from London. The same attention to small technical detail is what sits behind results like a 60 percent rise in leads for our client RakLAW. If your site is still carrying decisions made in the classic editor era, we would be glad to take a look.

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