Click Here — It’s Not About SEO!
Posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007
An argument started up recently regarding the use of actionable anchor text for links on a page, or phrases like “Click Here” when you want someone to click. It all started with Brian Clark’s question, does telling someone to “click here” actually matter? It was the following paragraph that made me think about the issue:
Another reader once chastised me for wasting anchor text with the words “click here,” even though my primary goal for the link was to get people to click (shocking, I know). This is when I first realized that Google is truly making people retarded. Somehow, this person no longer saw links as navigation for actual people to use; they only exist to pass on “juice” according to an algorithm that no one fully understands.
Does Anyone Else Feel The Argument Got Off On The Wrong Foot?
Brian was right, search engines shouldn’t be telling us how to run our websites, however, rather than heading off in the wrong direction and maintaining that “Click here” and other similar, meaningless phrases are the right thing to do, we should really be thinking about what is important: the users.
Dawud Miracle highlighted exactly the reason why “Click Here” should not be used as anchor text. Put plainly, you cannot tell what a link with the anchor text “Click Here” leads to.
Context Explains The Link
Some would argue that in a sentence such as, “For more information on accessibility, click here,” gives context to the link and lets users know what to expect when clicking there. But not all users are reading everything on the page.
Back in 1997, Jakob Nielson tested and wrote about how users read web pages, they scan and pick out highlighted phrases, headings and links. If you scanned down a page and found the phrase “Click Here” highlighted as a link, you would have to stop scanning and read around the link to find out what it was about. Or you could just click the link to find out, Mike Cherim alluded to this in a comment on Ian Lloyd’s compromise solution on Accessify. Clicking to find out what a link is all about is an untargeted click which may have a lower conversion, if you are talking in marketing terms. I wonder if Mike has anything that backs up his comment.
How About Accessibility?
It is always sensible to consult the WCAG when concerning ourselves with the usability and accessibility of these choices. Point 13.1 says the following:
Link text should be meaningful enough to make sense when read out of context — either on its own or as part of a sequence of links.
This is a priority 2 checkpoint, but it deals with the usability aspect above as well as assistive technologies.
Yucca Korpela has a number of good examples and explanations of link texts out of context, as part of a very good article on not using “Click Here” in general.
Click Here For A Compromise?
I mentioned a compromise solution on Accessify earlier, where Ian Lloyd suggested linking a full phrase including “Click Here” using a <span> and some CSS to emphasise the “Click Here” part of the link. This allows for the link to have all the information needed to read it out of context, but draws the attention of a normal “Click Here”. I’m not a fan of this method because it still compromises on usability, by making users read around the link or click it to find out what it means.
I propose a final compromise. Let your link contain all the information that you need and use “Click Here”. What is wrong with saying “Continue reading X”, “Click Here to subscribe to X” or “Click Here to buy to X”? If you look at the phrases that Marketing Sherpa showed were better, none of them included “Click Here” for a start, in fact they used a little more explanation.
Ideally, I’d expect more explanation from a link still. You can tell your users what to do, but explain where they are going too. Brian Clark was right, Google shouldn’t matter when thinking of your link text, but the accessibility and experience for your users should. As Roger Johansson said, almost a year ago, think before you link.
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1September 25th, 2007 at 3:28 am
Laura Says:Terrific! One of posts that I totally understand. I must say, though, that I have been guilty of the “click here” wording sin. Sometimes it just seems like the natural thing to say.
2September 25th, 2007 at 4:19 am
Calvin Warr Says:Well, if someone were scanning a page, “click here”would stop them and make them wonder. Context will tell them what is in there. A more meaningful link like “Get my free report now” might mean something in context, but still does not tell you what kind of report it is! No matter what, it would be unfair to the links if we expect to squeeze in a lot of meaning into those words. Simplicity works. But there will always be compromises. Do we really want to see the days of “Click this Link to Visit my WebSite about Silly Remarks that People say when they are drunk.”? I would rather read “click here”. :)
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September 25th, 2007 at 4:20 am
3September 25th, 2007 at 8:43 am
Phil Says:Laura: Glad this helped out for you! I agree, it can feel natural to write click here, it’s what you do on the web! I guess we’ll never stop people doing it, but the more who understand, the better.
Calvin: Can I direct you back to Yucca Korpela’s article. Consider a browser that lists out the links on a page, or an even better example, reads out the links on a page. To see or hear a “Click Here” link out of context leaves you no clue as to what is behind it (and in the case of a screenreader, you can’t “click” it anyway).
Also consider that you are looking for information on problem drinking and how to cure it and you come across a link entitled “Click Here”. Wouldn’t you be slightly put off when you turned up on the web site about silly remarks people say when they are drunk? It has wasted your time and is reasonably insensitive too.
What do you think?
4September 25th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Darren Says:I’m not a fan of “Click Here” but the results show that it is a more effective. I find it completely breaks any sort of flow that the article/post/paragraph creates and turns something into simple advertising.
5September 25th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
Phil Says:Hi Darren, “Click Here” may be a little more effective at attaining click throughs, but we mustn’t forget that that isn’t the only measure of marketing. There may be evidence that saying “Click Here” gets people to click, but what happens after that?
I don’t know the answer, but when I come to write links, I want everybody, not just those who click through, not just those who are able to read the surrounding context and not just those who have something with which to click, to know what they are clicking to see.
6September 26th, 2007 at 3:45 am
Calvin Warr Says:I think we are missing the whole point. Are we all in agreement that we WANT people to click? If you just take “click here”, it means nothing more than what it says. However, in context of the sentence or paragraph, it makes sense. Even “Get more NOW!” only makes sense in context. Otherwiese, exactly WHAT info am I expecting to get? The link cannot tell all. “Click here to get it” is as clear or as ambiguous as the other link text. Anyway, wanna take part in my fun “click here” experiment? cheesy grin
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September 26th, 2007 at 4:32 am
7September 26th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
Phil Says:Calvin, I think I want something slightly different to that. I want my users to WANT to click.
Even so, “Click Here” isn’t the only enemy, it’s just the most well known. The important thing is, link text should tell you what to expect when you click the link. This means that anyone, from your average user to one who is listening to a list of links being read out, will understand what the link is about and have a good guess at whether they want to click.
8October 5th, 2007 at 4:56 am
Mike Cherim Says:One of the problems with “click here” link text as it relates to accessibility is that it is often used repeatedly on a given page.
Some users, screen readers users for example, will assess the links on a page before actually exploring the page content — they are presented with elements like anchors and headings up front.
Thus, in that instance, “click here” is not only too removed from the context (at least the link text “Get my free report now” offers something), but the user may end up previewing ten links that say “click here.” You can probably just imagine what that must be like for the screen reader users.
Hehe, nope. I’ll put it this way: That’s what “they” say. To be honest, if I were to guess, I would think that “click here” links, especially out of context, would have a poorer click-through rate (unless my tongue in cheek comment at Accessify about curiosity causing the click is actually true).
Another concern I’ve heard many times is that the text “click here” is really unnecessary. As I’ve heard it, users know it’s a link, and they know that they have to click it to get somewhere. Thus stating that one has to “click here” is gross overkill. I guess I can see the logic there. I suppose it’d be like an embedded image with a caption or alt text that say “view image.”
9October 6th, 2007 at 2:37 am
Phil Says:Hi Mike, thanks for stopping by and commenting.
I’m slightly disappointed that your comment at Accessify was only, “what ‘they’ say,” but I’m not overly surprised. In reality we need to see reports like the Marketing Sherpa one that sparked this most recent debate, but that go into further detail. We need to ask questions like, “Did the user who clicked ‘click here’ get information that they wanted?” and “What is the time spent by users on a page that lies behind ‘click here’?”
Is it all based on curiosity or is it down to the fact that “Click Here” is a command and users like being told what to do? More in depth studies will show everyone, the marketers, the developers, even the SEO experts (who shouldn’t really be playing a part in the topic) whether users do react well to meaningless link text or not.
My feeling right now is that they don’t, it doesn’t make sense, it is impossible out of context and it breaks up natural reading/scanning of a page.
10October 6th, 2007 at 3:36 am
Mike Cherim Says:Personally, if I saw a link that said “click here,” and the source and target were unknown to me, I doubt I’d click on it — but on the web I’m wary.
I don’t use the term for accessibility reasons. But as far as click-throughs and sales conversions, I’d really have to hypothesize that it’s all about the context it’s in. In a direct comparison, context for context, I don’t think the ending value would result in a change.
For example, if someone were selling a widget, and they had a photo with a caption, an item description, followed by a price, and next to that was a link that either said “click here” or “buy widget now,” I doubt one choice of text would sell more widgets than the other. “Click here” would be less clear, and it might dupe a user into thinking it’s for more info or something, but I doubt more widgets would be sold in the end. At least with “buy widget now” the user, if clicking on it, would be doing something they can predict they’re doing. Instead of getting annoyed at possibly ending up someplace they didn’t want to be and wasting the site owner’s bandwidth with needless HTTP requests.
I’m going to send a link to someone who I think may be able to shed some light on this issue.
11October 6th, 2007 at 6:12 am
Mike Cherim Says:I sent the email and got a quick reply with some helpful information. The following was provided by Bill Slawski of SEO by the Sea fame.
Thanks Bill.
12October 6th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
Phil Says:Thanks Mike and Bill!
I love to see the results of real experiments into this field. We can spend all day guessing about what users think or do, but watching them and putting them through the questionnaires that Jared Spool has is the only way to really know.
I must point Brian Clarke to the comments in this post and see what else he has to say.
13December 27th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Seo Report Says:While I have always promoted the use of proper anchor text for linking, at the same time I am guilty of using click here as well. One can assume that the more advanced that SEs get, that they themselves are “following” the link and can tell if it’s relevant. As an example if I used, “Click Here For Cars” and it led to a page that didn’t have any of those words on it, the link would devalue or just count as a “basic” link.
14January 27th, 2008 at 12:24 am
vBMaster Says:I hate fake links which trick us.
15April 14th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
David Leonhardt Says:LIke most things, this is not a black and white issue. I still sometimes use anchor text that simply says “here” on my blog. But I do try to get keywords in, often using “click here for more about [topic]“. In the end, I think that is actually best for the user. “Click here” is not very descriptive, and there are some people who won’t know to click unless there is an instruction to do so.
16April 14th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
D Cooper Says:I normally format it this way, “for a more detailed explanation please click on (whatever keyword is).”
17November 18th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
PC Guide Says:Context will tell them what is in there. A more meaningful link like “Get my free report now” might mean something in context, but still does not tell you what kind of report it is! No matter what, it would be unfair to the links if we expect to squeeze in a lot of meaning into those words. Simplicity works.
18November 19th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Webtlk Says:Well, I use this “click here” a lot above all while reviewing gadgets. I use it when i link my articles to the orginal source…nothing to scam readers but i can understand that this may not be the right way to inform people. I had never thought in these term anyway. that’s because I am not scamming my readers but i can understand that links like these could be very triky if used by the wrong bloggers!
19November 28th, 2008 at 9:05 am
SEO Says:I agree that link text should not only be used to pass juice, but as you said, using specific anchor text will give the reader a better understanding of where the link points to and if they are interested in actually going there.
So, why not use specific anchor text that makes sense to the user and you get some juices flowing too!!!
20May 25th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Jules Says:No, using Click Here is not a waste. Yes, a lot of people think it’s wasted characters on your anchor text but actually people like to be LED ON to the next step. However, I would never use just Click Here so we go back to the ‘compromise’ above.