We were conducting user tests, in which we gave the user some tasks to perform, on a set of interactive wireframes we had created. All links on the page were blue (shown below).
Because the links were the only text on the page that weren't black, and there is no imagery, the users were instantly attracted to the blue links. Because of this, the person running the user tests made the decision to make the links black.
Having the links blue made the user ignore everything else on the page, which is unrealistic, whilst making them black again makes it hard to tell what text is a link and what isn't, which is also unrealistic as links will always have a color.
What is the best way to display links?