Stop Clicking Here! 7 Superior SEO Alternatives to Generic Links

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.

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.

• Being descriptive is key, but don’t write a novel.
• You skimmed the content, looking for important keywords or phrases.
• Aimée oversees the University's web presence, including all official websites, ULink, and the University's mobile app.
• What do you want your website visitors to do?
• At this point, “Click here” was still one of the most effective ways to direct attention to links, and it spread rapidly across all kinds of websites.

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.

It’s not scannable or useable

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 game-changer for users relying on screen readers.

Is "Click Here" Always Wrong?

Hit the heart while viewing any site to add it to your favorites, and everything you land on is kept in your history. Press the button and land on a random hand-picked site from a collection of games, art projects, and fun corners of the internet. You press one button and land on a site you have almost certainly never seen — a browser game, a piece of interactive art, or one of the internet’s stranger corners. Modern user-focused copywriting favours device-agnostic, action-oriented verbs like View, Download, Read, or Explore. According to figures published by statistica in October 2025, web page views from mobile phones and tablets – which are usually mouse-less – accounted for around 62.6% of all web traffic in the United Kingdom (UK).

Our websites are public extensions of the organizations we work for. In lawsuits filed over website accessibility in the past decade, courts have betting site uk ruled that inaccessible websites or apps may violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). And, as I said above, if you’re a marketer like me, everything you create should be accessible to as many people as possible.

I write Left-Aligned, a weekly newsletter about branding, accessibility, inclusive design and running a creative business. That's why accessibility guidance generally recommends making link text descriptive rather than relying on generic phrases like "click here". In fact, "click here" has been considered poor accessibility practice for years, and there are several good reasons why. These clear, actionable phrases are more effective in the small, fast-paced mobile browsing environment.

In this article, we’ll explore why these hyperlinks are a bad idea and what you should be writing to improve the user experience. Besides accessing information, products, and services online, users also want to navigate websites quickly to find what they’re after. The idea of using words like, “Click here” are based on the fear of visitors not finding your valuable content. John’s background spans the creative side of business, including content writing, branding, graphic design, and more.

It sounds so easy in theory, but in truth, why are our webpages only converting at an average of 2.8% in the US? Of course, they’re going to click links to learn more. As a user, they’re already researching a product or a service they want to purchase. In these sessions, I’ve discovered readers skim content rather than read every word. ‘Click here’ text creates uncertainty for readers, slows them down, and assumes they’re clicking.