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How To: Anchor Text (Don’t Click Here!)

It never fails to amaze me when I browse sites. One of the most critical factors on the page that affect everything from rankings, accessibility and usability is overlooked. Many times it is abused to the point of ridiculousness.

What I am talking about is the small, but powerful concept of anchor text; the contextual text that hyperlinks to another page or another site. The problem is the amount of sites that employ the following use of anchor text:

Click here
More info
Skip intro

To me, this is a ghastly oversight, especially when “click here’s" are littered throughout the page. These are links that are supposed to describe what you will find when you click the link. There are three reasons for eliminating this harmful practice from your site; Usability, Accessibility and Search Engine Rankings. When you over look this simple potential for greater success, I am sure that you will spend a few hours working on removing these unusable road signs in your site.

Concerning usability, an anchor text link of “click here" or “more info" provide no information as to what the visitor will find on the other side of those links. The goal of usability is for a site visitor to easily find their way through a site without thinking. Each step is clear and logical; information is easily found and communicated. “Click Here" provides an action, but not a reason.

For accessibility, this creates a headache to anyone using a screen reader or other assistive device to access the page. Most assistive technology allows users to bypass the navigation and go directly to the content. These programs also allow users to list the links on the page, which allows them to quickly navigate to the content. Imagine hearing a page’s link list with “click here" repeated 5 or more times in a row. With no clear description to the page of content – where does that leave the user?

Lastly, using anchor text is a rankings gold mine. Internal page links can have a positive affect on your rankings if they are structured properly. I can’t imagine that many site managers are striving for top rankings for “click here", but it seems as through there is a competition. You can affect your rankings by changing the anchor text to be more descriptive of the content and using keywords in the description.

On of the better examples I have seen in a use of content in anchor text is the American Cancer Society’s web site, cancer.org. In developing their navigation, they identified the five major groups of visitors that come to the site and the particular interests they have. By identifying their markets and the unique concerns of each group, they were able to formulate descriptive anchor text links into the site. This allows users to quickly find the information they need.

Nick Usborne's book, "Net Words" defines what I consider to be one of the best uses of anchor text in a web site, the “action-benefit interaction." The text link should not only describe the information that will be found when clicking on the link, but it should also offer a promise or a benefit to the user.

From a search engine rankings standpoint, employing user benefits in your text, and especially your text link is beneficial. Searchers tend to look for solutions to their problems. When a site is focused on the needs of the users, in the language of their need, it not only increases the chances for your site to rank for those terms, but also your site’s ability to connect with those users and increase your chance to convert them to buyers.

The next time you go to write “click here" in the text of your page, stop and ask yourself; Why should the user click this link? Does it properly describe the benefit to the user? Think through your strategy and rewrite that link.