Click here and other meaningless link phrases

A while ago Emil Stenström wrote an article about one of those things that you have to keep educating clients about: writing good and informative link phrases. As you might guess from the title, Emil specifically talks about the use of “click here” in Click here to read this article, but there are several other meaningless link phrases that seem almost as popular as forcing links to open in new windows.

A few examples:

When you see the examples like that it’s quite obvious that neither is of much use to the visitor. Instead, I would use this:

Another common link phrase that is meaningless on its own is “read more”, which is very common on news sites:

The latest news story

An excerpt from the full story, hopefully enough to let you decide whether you want to read the rest of it or not. Read more

It can be argued that the context will make it clear to the reader what will happen when they follow the link. That may be true, but I prefer linking the hed in those situations:

The latest news story

An excerpt from the full story, hopefully enough to let you decide whether you want to read the rest of it or not.

Help reduce the number of meaningless links on the Web by repeating “Think before you link” to yourself and to your clients.

Posted on November 28, 2006 in Usability, Accessibility