Brian Gongol
It's a mistaken but widespread practice to use "click here" as link text, as in, "To read more about the problems with link text, click here. It's bad practice to do so, for several reasons:
- "Click here" reduces the quality of search-engine indexes. Many search engines base their results, in part, on how other sites link to them. Specifically, they look at the link text (the words that form the link) to help determine how the page will rank. So when one writes, "For an essay on what's wrong with socialism, click here", the search engines think the article is about "click here", not about "what's wrong with socialism." That same link could easily have been written, "Find out what's wrong with socialism", which tells the search engines exactly what the link is about. (The relationship between link text and search engines has actually led to a prank called Googlebombing.)
- Readers need good link text to help them scan the page. As the eye moves across the page, the user pays more attention to words that are highlighted, like link text usually is. It's not very helpful to the reader to see a page filled with the same phrase highlighted over and over: "click here". It's much more helpful to readers to see a page filled with the important words highlighted, which is what happens when web creators use useful link text.
- Good link text helps blind users. More than 3.2 million Americans over age 40 are blind or vision-impaired. Many of them use screen-reader programs to help them use the Internet. Those screen readers depend upon good link text to make browsing possible for people with disabilities.
- Good link text encourages good writing. Integrating the link text with the context of what is being written about makes the web author more aware of what he or she is saying. A page or paragraph sprinkled with sentence fragments like, "For more information, click here!" is vastly harder to read and comprehend than one in which those same links are seamlessly integrated with the rest of the content. Good web authorship depends upon good writing, and thoughtful link text encourages the creator to assemble the content thoughtfully.