It’s an easy win, so think about the impact of the language you’re using. This can improve the user experience, help your SEO efforts, and—most importantly—heighten the user experience. Plus, they focus on the mechanics of using a mouse, which, let’s face it, as touchscreen devices start to dominate the market, is not always the case.

As a marketer, a big part of your job is to create content that’s informative and compelling to a large audience. “Click here” doesn’t give the reader — any reader — context as to what lies on the other side of that link. Sometimes web authors will even use 'click here' multiple times on a page, this just increases the problem. To improve the accessibility of links, it's important to use descriptive text that accurately describes the link's destination (and purpose).

In most cases, it’s best to identify or describe the link’s destination, as in the third example. That might not be a bad choice in some contexts, but here it fails to answer the fundamental question of where the link leads. The first example obviously offers the least context.

Image of a pixelated mouse cursor on a screen. So, either take the easy way out and just say “click here” or spend some time finding phrasing that really clicks with users. This will give the user more detailed information about what they’re clicking to and what to expect. Linking at the ends of sentences helps users to act more quickly. Thus, they will be able to take action immediately, rather than having to go back and hunt for the link in the middle of the sentence.

You presumably want your ideas to flow well on the page. I counter this by suggesting that you want your writing to come across as well as it can, even if the only audience is you. These internal links send a signal of “this is what this website thinks is the best page about this link text”. Search engines use the link text to understand why someone would link to a page.

Examples of Great Anchor Text CTAs

While these are simple examples, they hopefully offer some idea of the kind of anchor text that users will find helpful without being overly wordy or confusing. While we’d argue this is justified, we would also emphasize that “click here” is not the only culprit for a poor user experience. Direct language encourages users to take a desired action, and in marketing, a solid call to action is critical. It’s also good to be aware that some screen readers farm the links on the page and present them in one go. Indeed, diversification of anchor text is one way to avoid SEO penalties.

‘Click’ requires a mouse

These are calls to action that provide many choices, usually with vague labels and often to the same destination. First-time visitors would need to know in advance what the company is selling. The trick to optimizing calls to action is to present the action at the precise moment when your website visitor is most interested in taking the next step. If 97.2% of us don’t convert on a webpage, we’re likely confusing our users on what we want them to do to some degree.

• Imagine you’re a blind user and you’ve landed on a page with a bunch of uninformative links…
• I still have a lot to learn, and I think we can all do more to make the digital materials we create accessible to everyone no matter how they interact with the internet.
• The phrase “click here” is presumptuous, suboptimal, and uninspired.
• In these sessions, I’ve discovered readers skim content rather than read every word.
• Keywords improve the chances of the page ranking higher in search engine results, attracting more organic traffic.
• For instance, on a Samsung phone, going into Settings and then to the Accessibility section shows the TalkBack option.

A Carnegie Mellon study in 2019 of 1.09 million tweets with images found that only 0.1 percent of those tweets included alt text. Since the alt text in these jokes was not describing the image but instead having some random information intended as a joke, it could lead to further confusion for people with visual impairment. A 2023 BBC article noted the criticism against the trend when major brands such as McDonald’s and Red Bull shared it. This improves Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for a website, meaning that the article posted by creators has a higher chance of appearing as a top result on Google Search. Switching it on means a user can control their phone through voice commands or understand what is written on the screen.

So why is clicking here such a bad idea?

Within the context of the sentence, the reader might know the type of content they should expect. The chances are most of your writing isn’t read by someone using a mouse. If we have a website that everyone links to with the word “cat”, we would not expect it to rank well for the word “dog”. One of the beautiful things about accessible writing is you almost always end up making your content do better in search engines. In short; “click here”, or “read more” style links are bad for accessibility, don’t use them.

Using “click here” will only make navigation more challenging, adversely affecting your website’s user experience for a considerable portion of visitors. In fact, that phrase is the page’s first example of anchor text that is “too generic.” Changing your wording can improve site navigation and your website’s ranking. The goal was to find out if the wording used in hyperlinks could make a difference in click through rates.

First, remove the “Learn More” button. The smaller link to details would make more sense if it explained what the details are about. In the example below, the top CTA is the best option because the destination is clearly defined and is the desired user task.

I can see a counter-argument if the content you’re writing is personal and you don’t care if others can read or find it. Search engines don’t only look at links from other sites to yours. One of the most significant ranking factors is how many links point to a page. I could turn this post into a rationale for using marketing budget to make your website more accessible. I could rant for hours on the reasons why that makes zero business sense, but hahaspin uk it is a common position for a company to hold. When I’m in a noisy room it’s hard to think but when it’s quiet it’s easier.