Why is “click here” bad link text?
Screen readers can list every link on a page on its own, out of context. A list that reads "click here, click here, read more, here" tells the visitor nothing. Google also reads link text to understand what the destination page is about. Make the link the meaningful words: "see our kitchen gallery" rather than "to see our gallery, click here".
Why it matters
Many screen reader users navigate by tabbing from link to link or by pulling up a list of links, hearing only the link text each time. "Read more" repeated nine times on a news page is nine identical links to nine different places. Sighted visitors skim for links too, and descriptive text tells them where they will end up without reading the surrounding sentence. For search, the words in a link are a signal about the page it points to, so "kitchen fitting in Tonbridge" as link text helps that page rank for it, and "click here" helps nothing.
Writing good link text
- Describe the destination: "our opening hours", "book a survey", "the full price list".
- Make it different for links that go to different places.
- Do not include "click" or "link"; people know what a link is.
- Keep it short, but long enough to make sense alone.
- If the design insists on "Read more" buttons, add an aria-label with the article title so screen readers hear "Read more about our new showroom".
How to check
Our check lists links on your home page whose text is "click here", "here", "read more", "more", "link" or similar, and links with no text at all, such as an icon with no alternative. Browser extensions such as WAVE flag the same.
How to fix it
Edit the links in the page content; it is a wording change, not a technical one. For "read more" links generated by a theme or a blog listing, the theme usually offers a setting or a filter to include the post title, or a developer can add an aria-label. For icon-only links, such as social media icons, add an aria-label naming the destination, or visually hidden text inside the link.
Not sure how your own site does on this? Run the free check: it takes about twenty seconds and reports on this and thirty other things.