Elementor custom loop template (php/mysql)

I’ve inherited a site that has got hundreds of posts that link straight out to a youtube video or a pdf file. Every post simply contains a link, something like <a href="http://youtube.com/videoid">Watch video</a> or <a href="link to pdf">Download PDF</a>

From my list of posts, rather than link to a post page that then links out to the content, I want to be able to create a direct link to the content from the post list loop.

One way I thought that this might be possible was to run a mysql query that would look for the URL inside the and then copy that URL to a custom field called ‘link’. Then I could create an Elementor template that used link as the destination for the click?

There may be a simpler or better way to do this – I’m not 100% sure how to do it in a standard wordpress theme, and definitely not within elementor at the moment.