Click here! How many times have you seen this ubiquitous phrase strewn across the internet?
Since the early days of web surfing, this has undoubtedly been one of the pillars of online lexicon. It is as commonplace as “www” and “.com” and as universally accepted as “Google” having become a verb.
And it’s with good reason, right? After all, when you want someone to click on your link, what better way to tell them than to spell it out with this simple two-word command — click (do this action) here (on this!).
At first glance, it may seem like the logical and straightforward way to label your call to action (CTA). But what if I told you that using this enduring phrase is not only subpar, but actually hurts the effectiveness of your whole website?
Four Reasons Why “Click Here” Must Go
1. It Makes the Reader Work Harder To Determine What the Link Is About
People reading a webpage are most often not dedicated readers at all — they’re scanners. As such, your page formatting is crucial to keeping the user’s attention and for providing them with the most efficient way to consume the content. It’s important to visually guide them and provide appropriate highlights.
Links on a webpage are one of the key visuals that catch the eye of the reader. Links stand out because they visually represent their interactivity, usually with an underline or different color. So when the text that stands out is “click here,” yes, it tells the users you want them to click, but it tells them nothing about why they should click or what content is going to be on the other side of their click.
Instead, they must search the surrounding text to see what you’re referring to and to understand what this link is about and why it’s important. In most of these situations this context will be very close to the link — usually immediately preceding or following it — so it may not seem like you’re asking the reader to do a ton of extra work.
But keep in mind the attention span and motivation level of the average internet user. People often scan and decide within seconds if they want to stay on a webpage and keep reading. If they have to work even an ounce more than needed to understand your content, that’s a potential unhappy user you may never get back. Making things as easy and intuitive as possible is a principle that applies to any website.
Consider the benefits of scrapping “click here” and having your label describe the actual link destination. For example, instead of saying “Click here to check out photos from the conference,” say “Check out photos from the conference,” making the bolded part the link.
With this strategy, you are helping the reader in multiple ways. You eliminate unnecessary words, are more direct, and the important context is highlighted naturally. This also gets rid of the need to use bold, italics or other formatting on the important words because the style of the link stands out on its own.
2. It Hurts Accessibility for Impaired Readers
An often overlooked aspect of a website is accessibility — the practice of removing barriers to usability and making your site as inclusive as possible for people with disabilities. This includes impairments of sight, hearing, cognition, or motor skills. These users have every right to a usable web experience as anyone else.
Your links and CTAs are one of the crucial things to get right when it comes to accessibility — they should be clear, descriptive and visually stand out. Someone with a cognitive disability may have trouble with attention, focus, or memory. Why not do everything you can to aid that person’s experience by providing relevant links that don’t require extra discernment?
From another angle, consider those with visual impairments. In these situations, making your key words and phrases stand out becomes even more critical. If the person is using a screen reader to audibly transcribe the page, think of what will happen when the computer comes to a “click here” hyperlink.
It will announce a link, but will then read the generic phrase that doesn’t relay the most useful information. To understand where the link goes, the user has to hunt elsewhere for an explanation. When dealing with a disability, an already cumbersome task has become even more so.
A person with a disability who finds an accessible site is more likely to become a loyal user, so the small efforts you take to enhance accessibility can go a long way.
3. It Hurts Your SEO
Search engine optimization, or SEO, should be a vital strategy for any website you wish to have flourish in the competitive online world. SEO pertains to all the factors that help your pages rank well in search results from search engines like Google and Bing.
There are many angles to SEO, some of which are actually outside of your direct control (such as attracting quality links to your site from other websites). But much of SEO is within your control, and your on-page optimization is front and center.
Part of the formatting that improves your SEO is your anchor text. The anchor text is the hyperlinked portion of a text string. When Google and other search engines read the source code, they run into a HTML <a> tag containing your link. They also read the anchor text associated with that link. This text is thus determined to have value beyond the rest of the words on your page.
Practically speaking, this means that your anchor text should always be strategically chosen. In particular, when you’ve developed a keyword strategy for your website (the words you want to rank for in search results), you should use your keywords in your anchor text whenever possible.
With all this in mind, think about what happens behind the scenes when Google crawls your page and finds an abundance of “click here” anchor text. Unless the purpose of your website is to discuss the phrase “click here,” you’re giving the search engines nothing of value. You're also losing a prime opportunity to use the words, phrases and ideas that are actually important in your content.
4. It’s Cliché, Outdated and Amateurish
The more critical elements aside, a final reason to not use this phrase is that it’s simply bad — and lazy. As mentioned in point #1, “click here” is generic fluff that tells the user nothing useful other than the fact that you really want them to click on something.
The fact that it’s so bland and overused can cause people to tune it out as more noise on the page. If it is repeated often on a single page, it takes on the gimmicky feel of a desperate cry for attention, giving your page a very unprofessional look. This is especially true if you use excessive formatting like exclamation points or all caps.
Your CTA links should always be able to stand on their own without relying on gimmicks. Clear, concise anchor text and visually appealing styles go a long way in getting a user’s coveted click. You shouldn’t have to beg them. You also don't need to overwhelm them with prompts about what page elements are clickable. If your link styling and overall user experience is well done, they’ll know what to click.
Finally, one more minor thought on this topic. With the number of mobile and touchscreen devices used today, “click here” makes even less sense. Such device users don’t actually “click” at all — they tap, pinch and swipe. While this is semantics, and of course touchscreen users would know that “click here” equates to “tap here,” it highlights the fact that the phrase becomes even more outdated as new technologies persist.
What About Similar Phrases?
Many of the reasons discussed for not using “click here” would also apply to other generic phrases such as “get started,” “read more,” and “go.” The general rule is that you should always make your anchor text descriptive and indicative of the content it leads to.
“Information scent” is an important concept in the world of user experience. As a user is exploring a website, they look for various cues that will tell them where they should go next to find their desired content. The more descriptive a link is, the more likely a user is to click it. Generic link labels have incredibly low information scent and are more likely to be ignored.
But that’s not to say that the more cookie-cutter terms are never appropriate. In some cases, for instance a CTA button that’s designed for a one or two-word phrase, these terms may be the most fitting. Just use them wisely and with discretion.
And although a phrase like “read more” is generic and in some cases could be more descriptive, it’s not as egregious as “click here.” “Reading more” is usually still the actual action you take after clicking, whereas “click here” by itself will never tell you what happens after your click.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, there’s almost never a good reason to put this phrase on your website, tempting as it may be. If you’re doing it out of convenience, discipline yourself to be more creative and strategic with your CTAs. If you’re doing it to try to get clicks, instead think about what keywords are most important and how they are formatted. If they’re both enticing and stand out visually, that should be enough to drive the desired engagement.
Following the principles outlined above will result in a much better experience for your website. Crawler bots will be able to more easily detect your important keywords for SEO purposes, and human users will be able to better navigate and consume your content.
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