Designers and developers often needed to explain that certain words were interactive. Click the 'I'm here' button on your app or scan the QR code to let us know you're ready – the signs will explain how. Once you've arrived, follow the signs to get to the collection point. While “Click here” served its purpose during the early days of the internet, it’s time to embrace more effective methods that speak directly to the needs and expectations of today’s web users. These descriptions add clarity, allowing the user to make an informed decision.

For example, when you opened this blog, there’s a good chance that you scanned the subheadings before deciding whether you wanted to read the article. Unfortunately, it’s a common user experience (UX) issue, but it’s easy to correct. I still have a lot to learn, and I think we can all do more to make the digital materials we create accessible to everyone no matter how they interact with the internet. Yet as a digital marketer and accessibility advocate, you should be familiar with some of these concepts, so as you work with website and email designers, you can expect them to return accessible products to you. “Click here” doesn’t give the reader — any reader — context as to what lies on the other side of that link. She told me creating a hyperlink out of the words “click here” was not really accessible.

As a SaaS email marker I write a lot of copy that often requires a lot of hyperlinking (ie. embedding links). What do you want your website visitors to do? A call to action (CTA) is simply a graphic and/or text asking visitors to do something. Because this isn’t the first website you’ve ever visited, you know from experience the picture above only serves as a supporting visual, even if not well. The nature of the web is to click—or to tap if you’re using a mobile device. Even more, a well-designed website should lead people to the pages you want them to view.

There are much better alternatives

Screen readers, when scanning content will announce Link (when is such) and then continue reading aloud the content. I took this as a learning opportunity and here are my findings. I hadn’t even thought of the implications that a click here link could have on accessibility.

• There are other accessibility reasons why “click here” is a bad idea.
• Now we’ve established that “click here” hyperlinks should be avoided at all costs, what’s the best approach instead?
• There are several reasons why “click here” hyperlinks are best avoided.
• From understanding channels, to testing creative, to measuring incremental gains – Click Here is the book you need to read if you want to grow your business.
• “Click here” doesn’t tell users what users will get or where they will go.

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The word “click” is a relic from the desktop-dominated era of twenty years ago. When a crawler hits a link on your site, it uses the anchor text (the clickable words) to understand what the target page is about. Google and other search engines use web crawlers to map out the internet. The user is forced to stop, look at the words before or after the link, and piece together what they are supposed to be clicking.

It’s not unusual to see phrases like “click here” or “read more” even though these are far from optimal. For this, effective hyperlinks are as much a part of the design experience as a site’s layout or color scheme. One of the biggest of these is the “click here” practice for hyperlinks.

Descriptive links act as signposts, helping visitors quickly understand what's available and where they'll end up. Without reading the entire page, someone can quickly understand their options and decide where they want to go. Some screen readers even allow users to generate a list of links on a page and navigate through those links alone.

Choose anchor text that adds value, informs your users, and boosts your SEO. Ditching “Click Here” is a small yet impactful change that can vastly improve your website’s user experience, accessibility, and SEO performance. And let’s be real, making your site accessible is not just good practice; it’s the right thing to do. Descriptive anchor text is a inkybet official game-changer for users relying on screen readers.

Our vision is to combine high-touch with high-tech  to be the best in the business

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 outside of Mountain View fully understands. The employee thought it was archaic to tell people to “click here,” and his boss thought otherwise. From a copywriting standpoint, it’s a no brainer—it’s been proven time and time again that if you want someone to do something, you’ll get better results if you tell them exactly what to do. This gives the user no option but to go back and get their screen reader to read every word on the page. Imagine a long page with no link text except for ‘click here’.

A link like "click here" or "read more" in their alphabetical list would provide no context for where that link will take them. Our team is here to help if you have questions or want to brainstorm ideas for how to word your links. We encourage you to review your site for “click here” references and update the statements to be action-based and descriptive.

Sorry that was quite a run on sentence. For a large portion of my career, I hyperlinked frequently within copy by asking users to click here. Linking out to documentation, privacy policies, blog articles, you name it.