One of the golden rules for web content writing is never to write ‘click here’ or ‘find out more here’.
It’s one of the golden rules, yet it’s also a rule I see broken most often.
This has already been covered by others (and I’ll link to them here), but here’s my take on why you should never write ‘click here’ in your web content.
Link text should make sense out of context
When you write ‘click here’, your link text (known as ‘anchor text’) doesn’t make sense out of context.
That’s why we caution against ‘click here’ or ‘find out more here’.
But there are some other variations that are almost as bad.
- ‘For your chance to win £500, fill in our survey’.
- ‘We’re looking for someone to join our board of trustees. Apply online.’
Take the link words out of context and they’re meaningless. ‘online’ doesn’t make sense on its own, and nor does ‘survey’, any more than ‘click here’ or ‘here’ do.
But why does link text need to make sense out of context?
Readers scan web copy, they don’t read
Readers are unlikely to read every word of your web copy. They’re task-focused, so their eye scans the page, looking for relevant information that will help them complete their task as quickly as possible.
Avoid grey walls of text
We caution against grey walls of text (big blocks of prose) because they’re difficult to scan. The eye is drawn to elements like headings and bullets, because these help the reader scan the page.
Link text plays its part. The links act as a kind of signpost, showing next actions the reader can take. For maximum benefit, these links should stand alone and give a clear signal of what lies behind the link.
Search engines
A search engine like Google pays attention to the words used to link from one page or site to another. So if the link text contains a phrase like ‘digital camera’, Google uses this information to decide how to rank the destination page for terms about digital cameras.
Google takes into account hundreds of other factors too, but anchor text is still an important indicator of what a destination URL is about. So we can help search engines by using meaningful anchor text.
Accessibility for people with disabilities
This refers to how people with disabilities are able to access your website and content.
There are lots of different disabilities that might affect someone’s ability to access your site. A lot of the guidance out there for accessibility relates to how a website is designed, and the underlying code sitting behind it. But there are quite a few things content editors can do to make their content more accessible.
Web content should help screen readers
Lots of people access the internet using a screen reader. This is technology that reads out the content of a website to users who cannot see the text on the screen.
Like others, these users want to scan the contents for relevant information, and are often looking for the next thing to click on.
Most screen readers are designed to aid scanning. They’ll jump from section to section and you can also ask a screen reader to jump to link text. This is why it’s really important that all the anchor text on a page is unique and actually describes what the user will find when they click on it.
Imagine a long page with no link text except for ‘click here’. This gives the user no option but to go back and get their screen reader to read every word on the page. Unclear link text massively hinders people who are using a screen reader.
Fat fingers
Most web browsing is now being done on mobile devices. Whatever usability problems a website presents on a desktop are often even worse on a mobile.
For mobile usability, we recommend that you use relatively long link phrases – more than just one or two words. So ‘click here’ might be physically difficult for the user to tap on a mobile touch screen (and there’s a risk that the user will tap the wrong link).
Don’t just take it from me
That’s my take on why you should never write ‘click here’. But don’t just take it from me – here are some other great reasons why ‘click here’ makes for such bad web copy.
- Stephanie Leary explains why ‘click here’ is a terrible link, and what to write instead.
- W3 advises don’t use ‘click here’ as link text, suggesting that link text shouldn’t contain a verb.
- Mark Caron says don’t use ‘click here’, and identifies other vague link phrases to avoid.
- Search Engine Journal suggests some better alternatives to ‘click here’.
- In its guide to why your links should never say ‘click here’, UX Movement argues that the word ‘click… takes the user’s attention away from your interface and on to their mouse’.