Webmasters Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for webmasters. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I know that I should try to avoid links that have the text "click here". But how do I avoid that? What are good alternatives to
- You can find more information about certain topic over here.
- For more information about our trip, click here.
Just wondering if other people have some good practices and ways of avoiding these links.
The problem about "click here" links is that they are not meaningful, as obviously a link is there to be clicked! You should try to link something that describes what you are linking.
For instance, instead of using:
There are several books about cooking:
You could write
There are several books about cooking:
Instead of
For more information about our trip, click here.
you could use:
Find more about the activities of our trip!
Again:
You can find more information about certain topic over here.
You can find more information about certain topic in our wiki or in the manual page of topic.
In all these example I know in advance what the linked page will be about. The user does not need to be instructed that those are links or that they are meant to be clicked, he/she knows it!
W3C offers this advice about how to use link text in their Web Content Accessibility Guidelines:
Good link text should not be overly general; don't use "click here." Not only is this phrase device-dependent (it implies a pointing device) it says nothing about what is to be found if the link if followed. Instead of "click here", link text should indicate the nature of the link target, as in "more information about sea lions" or "text-only version of this page".
Linked text should tell a visitor what they will find on that page, without them having to read the surrounding text. This allows the page to be skimmed more easily, and improves accessibility for those using screen readers, which work by reading the selected text when a user tabs between links.
If you use "click here" multiple times on a page, not only will you make linked text much harder to skim, but you'll create a usability nightmare for those using screen readers. When they tab between you'll links, they'll hear, “click here!“ for all of them, without understanding where those links will send them. (If you have to do this, use the title attribute on link text to explain what you're linking to.)
Instead of the examples you gave:
- You can find more information about certain topic over here.
- For more information about our trip, click here.
You could write:
Or simply:
- Learn more about certain topic.
- Read more about our trip.
Make it clear that the text you're highlighting describes what will be found on the linked page.
The only possible–if somewhat dubious–exception to this is for sales pages and marketing, when using active, commanding link text such as "click here" may increase conversion:
The goal was to find out if the wording used in hyperlinks could make a difference in click through rates. The answer is yes. They found that the right two or three “click” link words can lift click through rates by more than 8%.
– From Does Telling Someone to “Click Here” Work? on Copyblogger.
Be creative. It's your sentence structure that matters.
Instead of writing
You can find more information about certain topic over here.
why not write
After researching certain topic for quite some time, I found it fascinating!
or, instead of
For more information about our trip, click here
why not write
Our trip was full of magical moments, ones that I would really like to share with you.
You might have a programmer's spirit in you, but to be really good, you must also have more. A spirit of a writer, as an example.
Use carefully chosen titles as link captions, which describe the content behind. It is useful for search engines. Also, it requires that your content should be well-organized... SEO is not a list of tricks, but rather a result of well-structured, useful content, with keeping usability issues in mind (I mean good SEO).
Feel free to study sites with good usability/SEO, say, Wikipedia!
I try include the destination page/concept title within the text, but still keep is as a separate part from the sentence structure to highlight the fact that it's indended as a major/relevant exit point (as opposed to a sidenote or a reference). That way, the text itself also ends up being more informative so user can better decide whether she's interested in following the link or not.
With that style, the rewrite would be:
- You can find more information about certain topic over at: Tropica Topica site
- For more information about our trip, go to: The Tripsy Planner
Or if you're feeling more listey:
- More information about certain topic: Tropica Topica site: "This is my topic"
- More information about our trip: The Tripsy Planner: "Svish's Big Journey"
My recommendation would be to actually keep the click here, but also add links within the lists, such as:
My reasoning is that some people still don't understand the idea that anything can be a link (when not part of a menu), so telling people to "click here" provides an action to do.
