Today, I’m going to confess something and then I’m going to ask a question. Here goes…
First off, don’t take this the wrong way or think I cheat on my work for clients, but I use Wikipedia a lot when I’m researching sites and topics for clients. And yes, I use Wikipedia to help generate content (and by generate I mean copy and paste).
Now, before you leave disgusted, let me explain. I did a little research to ensure that I was not doing anything illegal and everything checked out since my sources are open source. I only copy and paste info like this by request when a client asks for “poor man’s SEO copy,” otherwise I do the longer, harder, but better process. In this case, what doing it the short way means for me is that since I usually charge by the hour, the client wants to get the job done as quickly as possible (so they can pay me less) and that they are not very concerned with having the most original content for their site (which means their keywords are not going to work very well because the competition for them will be too high). Believe me, this is a very crappy way to do SEO copy, but since that is what they want, that is what they get. I only use open source pages like Wikipedia or TripAdvisor.com to gather info. I do a “glance over” which entails a five second check to a more reliable source to ensure that I am not about to use obviously wrong info. Then, I re-word or paraphrase the copy and pasted blurbs from WikiP or wherever to fit my client’s style and space. Rocket science, right? Hardly.
Now, for my question, which pertains to the copy and paste part. As we have all noticed, Wikipedia loves hyperlinks. They are everywhere. So when I copy and past to a Word document all the hyperlinks embedded in the text come with me. And since I cannot send hyperlinked text to a web developer unless I have a death wish, I have to remove them all. Separately. One at a time. And this takes forever and occasionally leaves my hand cramped from all the clicking. So, does anyone know how to remove all hyperlinks from a document without having to remove them each individually? If you can answer this question, I will be eternally thankful. If not, I get to scour the belly of Google searching for this elusive answer.
The Catalyst Spark 