5 Reasons You Should Never Write ‘Click Here’

Go to Google & search for the phrase “click here” and you’ll see somewhere between 1.5 and 2 billion results. To put that in perspective, searching for the phrase “thank you” will return around 255 million results. Even “microsoft” only returns around a billion results. That puts “click here” well up in the top 10 most popular phrases on the web & possibly makes it one of the most (over) used phrases in the English language.

So if a couple of billion other pages are use “click here”, why shouldn’t you? Here are a few quick reasons:

Reason 1. Don’t Patronise Your Readers

People understand what a link does. If it’s underlined & it’s on a website, you don’t need to spell it out. When was the last time you saw a book with “Read Me” written in big bold type on the front cover?

Reason 2. Improve Your Site’s Scanability

Say you’re trying to get your visitors onto a page containing driving directions to your office. You could either explain that in plain copy & waste the highest-contrast element of the paragraph on a meaningless phrase, or, you could make sure the first thing their eye sees when scanning the paragraph tells them exactly what your link does. Glance at these two examples & see if you can figure out what the links do without reading word-for-word:

Example 1
Our facility is centrally located and can be reached simply by both road and rail networks. For directions click here. Free off-road parking is available nearby.

Example 2
Our facility is centrally located. Follow these directions to our office to reach us by either road or rail network. Free off-road parking is available nearby.

Even a passing glance tells you what’s behind the link in the second example.

Reason 3. Boost Your Search Rankings

If you’ve managed to build 100 links to one of your pages with the key phrase “silver necklaces”, you’re going to rank higher in the search engines for the phrase “silver necklaces”. Conversely, if all of those 100 links use the key phrase “click here”, those search engine algorithms are going to associate your page with the phrase “click here” and you’ll lose out on all those potential necklace sales.

A simple example of that concept in action is the phrase “leave”. Search any of the major search engines for the phrase “leave” and you’ll see the highest ranking pages will be Disney, Yahoo and Google themselves. Why is that? Well since child-protecting legislation came in, Adult and Gambling sites are compelled to include an “Are you of legal age?” entrance page. Many of those pages include a link for minors to leave the site, containing the phrase “leave now” or “exit now”. Obviously they need to send visitors leaving their sites somewhere. Disney, Yahoo and Google are obvious non-offensive choices and, as a result, they’ve each built a healthy ranking for the word “leave”.

Reason 4: Call Your Readers To Action

If you listen to radio ads, you’ll often hear them finish with something like “Call us today on XXX XXX for your free quote” or “Visit your nearest store today”. The reason you hear this kind of formula so often is that it gets results: tell your customer/reader/donor what you want them to do & they’re more likely to do it.
“Click here” was the original web-based call to action, but it’s so commonplace and implicit it does nothing. You’re no more likely to click that link than you are any of the other 2-billion. To improve your results, tell your customer what action they’re really going to take by clicking that link. A couple of examples:

• Sign up to our free monthly stock-trading newsletter
• Find out more about home rewiring
• View directions to our city-centre office
• Forward this offer to a friend

Each of those stands out more as a link than “click here”, they tell the visitor exactly what’s behind the link without forcing them to read an entire paragraph, and they conjur up the image of the visitor taking that action.

Reason 5: It’s the Quickest, Cheapest Way to Improve Your Campaign Results

Unlike most methods of increasing results (buying traffic, tweaking layout, crafting a sales pitch, etc), changing your link anchor text takes next to no time, next to no money, and it can dramatically improve your results.