Don't try to reinvent the wheel, use one of the CPAN modules for HTML parsing. You could easily use HTML::TokeParser::Simple.
I think maybe someone has already done what you're trying to do, check out HTML::LinkAdd too.

In reply to Re: regex to match content not inside an HTML anchor or other tags by Ido
in thread regex to match content not inside an HTML anchor or other tags by GregHurrell

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