linkelement

The link element is an HTML element used to declare a relationship between the current document and an external resource. It is an empty element that does not render content and is most often placed in the head section of a document. Its primary purpose is to link the document to metadata or resources such as stylesheets, icons, and preloaded assets, rather than to create visible content.

Common attributes include href, rel, and as. The href attribute specifies the URL of the resource. The rel attribute defines the relationship type, such as stylesheet for CSS files, icon for favicons, canonical for search engine optimization, or preload for resource hints. The as attribute is used with certain rel values (notably preload and preconnect) to indicate the kind of resource being fetched, which helps the browser optimize loading. Other attributes frequently used with link elements include type (the MIME type), media (a media query), integrity (subresource integrity), crossorigin, referrerpolicy, sizes, hreflang, and title.

Typical uses encompass linking external stylesheets, declaring icons and favicons, providing canonical URLs, and issuing resource hints like preload, preconnect, and prefetch to improve performance. For example, a stylesheet might be linked with <link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css">, while a favicon could be declared with <link rel="icon" href="favicon.ico" sizes="16x16">. A preload example is <link rel="preload" href="font.woff2" as="font" type="font/woff2" crossorigin>.

Compared with the anchor element, which creates navigable links in the document body, the link element conveys metadata and resource relationships that influence how the document is fetched and processed by the browser.