--- title: "'Click Here' Hurts Your SEO and UX: Why It's Time to Change" date: 2020-10-06T05:00:00-04:00 author: Sean Smith canonical_url: "https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-1/click-here/" section: Podcast --- <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-BEGIN\]\]>[Skip to main content](#main-content)Season 04 Episode 1 – Oct 06, 2020 21:48 [Show Notes](#show-notes) ## 'Click Here' Hurts Your SEO and UX: Why It's Time to Change  0:00 0:00 1.0x 0.75x1.0x1.25x1.5x2x [](//dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/website101podcast.com/uploads/mp3/season-04/01-Click-Here-Master.mp3) In this episode of Website 101, Sean Smith and Mike Mele discuss the importance of avoiding the phrase 'click here' in link labeling and its impact on SEO and user experience. ### Show Notes Mike gives a brief history of where **Click here** comes from. Mike has advice on how to make your links stand out so that click here is not necessary. we also go over the negative SEO impact of using click here. We also talk about how the the internet body that determines and publishes about web standards: [The W3C has decided to use Craft CMS](https://w3c.studio24.net/docs/cms-selection-report) to publish their website. ### **Timestamps** \[00:00\] Intro \[00:20\] Topic begins \[01:20\] Reasons for avoiding "click here" \[07:07\] W3C guidelines for link labeling \[09:36\] W3C guidelines continued \[12:25\] Accessibility considerations when labeling links \[14:43\] Accessibility continued \[15:01\] Encouraging listener feedback and guest suggestions \[15:30\] Upcoming episodes for season 4 ### Show Links - [Mike's Blog: Don't Say 'Click Here'](https://belikewater.ca/blog/entry/click-here) - [Smashing Magazine: Click Here](Why%20Your%20Links%20Should%20Never%20Say%20%E2%80%9CClick%20Here%E2%80%9D) - [W3C: Don't use "click here" as link text](https://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/noClickHere) - [W3C Selects Craft CMS](https://w3c.studio24.net/docs/cms-selection-report) Powered Transcript Accuracy of transcript is dependant on AI technology. **\[00:00\]** **Sean:** Hi, and welcome back to the website 101 podcast. This is season four. And with me, as always, is Mike Mele from the depths of the pandemic. We're in it pretty deep, aren't we? Yes, we are. Mike, how is your summer? **\[00:20\]** **Mike:** It was pretty eventful. Had some bad things happen. My dad passed away. My dog got sick, thanks buddy. But I was able to travel back to Prince Edward Island, which is a province where I'm from, despite the restrictions, whatever. Anyway, long story, but it's a good place to have isolated over the summer. It was nice to be there. **\[00:44\]** **Sean:** Wow, isolated in my basement right here in Toronto. **\[00:47\]** **Mike:** Just like we do every day. **\[00:50\]** **Sean:** Pretty much, there are changes for me. So today we're going to talk about two different things. The first thing we're going to talk about is click here and why you should never use that. And then following that, we're going to give you a little bit of a sneak peek or discussion of the various topics that are going to be recorded for the rest of the season. Yeah. So Mike, why don't you take it away and tell us why click here is not recommended. **\[01:20\]** **Mike:** Right, so what we're referring to here is that phrase that you're probably very familiar with, reading on the web and using on the web which is when you have a link to some page, you might write to learn more about us, click here. And then the phrase click here is the link that points to that other page. That's what we're referring to when we say click here. **\[01:44\]** **Sean:** And this, this used to be very, very, very common, but it's a lot less common than it used to be. Unfortunately, it needs to be dropped down to zero, which is why we're having this **\[01:54\]** **Mike:** discussion. Absolutely. We're very much in favor of getting rid of the "click here" phrase altogether and we'll explain throughout the episode why that is. But just to briefly explain where it came from, back when the internet was new in the 90s, a lot of people were getting on to the web didn't know how to navigate through a website. So that's why people started saying "click here" because everyone's, oh I got this mouse now and I point the little arrow at things. People would say "click here" as a way to indicate this is a link that takes you to another page. So back then it made a lot of sense. **\[02:31\]** **Sean:** Yeah, it'd be like trying to teach your grandparents today how to hook up their smart speaker to turn on the lights or something. **\[02:39\]** **Mike:** Yeah, exactly. Everyone was in that same boat back then. But the truth is, over the years, and this is one of the reasons it's a good idea to get rid of it, people now recognize a link when they see it, generally, on a website. As long as the website is coded and built and designed properly. **\[02:59\]** **Sean:** Yeah, because a link is typically signified by having a different color or a underlying under it. And sometimes the color or the underlying will change when you hover over. **\[03:11\]** **Mike:** Exactly, hover effects. Yeah. Actually, it's funny we mentioned this now because I recently, I subscribed to a service that delivers vegetables to me on a weekly basis sort of thing. You know, one of these farmer type things. Anyway, it doesn't matter. **\[03:27\]** **Sean:** Hello, fresh or whatever. **\[03:28\]** **Mike:** Well, it's something like it's not the meal kit thing. It's actually just raw vegetables that come to your door kind of thing. But it's a pretty cool service. Yeah, it's a local thing here in China. You need to talk about that off. Yeah, yeah. Tell you all about it. But when I was away this summer, I put the whole thing on hold, and it said, oh yeah, you can suspend your account here, and I did that instead of canceling it all together. And then when I came back to Toronto after the summer, I wanted to fire it up again, and I went onto their website, and I swear, I went everywhere, and I couldn't find the place where I turned it back on. And I ended up creating a whole new account so that I could basically sign up again because I couldn't start up the one I had canceled. And then I later learned there was a link somewhere, but that link didn't look in any way any different than any other text on the page. Oh my God. **\[04:26\]** **Sean:** It's such a flaw in the design or the card. **\[04:30\]** **Mike:** Yeah. And I feel like I'm a pretty knowledgeable guy when it comes to navigating the web. But I couldn't, it was the same color, the same, there's no underlying, nothing. And I later learned, oh, when I point my mouse at it, it turns into a little hand there and suddenly it's a link. That's what I was supposed to see. Didn't see it. **\[04:48\]** **Sean:** Wow. Did you email them and tell them to fix that? **\[04:53\]** **Mike:** You know, I didn't yet, I guess I encountered this kind of thing quite often. I have to pick and choose which ones I'm going to complain about, maybe I didn't make the cut. **\[05:01\]** **Sean:** Maybe you should email them and say, hey, I'm a web developer, and by the way, I noticed this issue. If you'd like, I'll help you out. **\[05:10\]** **Mike:** I'm happy to fix it for you. Yeah. That's a good idea. Maybe I should think about that. But yeah, that's sort of point A here is make sure that before you start taking away the click here stuff, make sure you're designing your site in such a way that your hyperlinks stand out against the rest of the text. **\[05:28\]** **Sean:** Right. Buttons are buttons and they're pretty obvious, which when you see a button that says click here or click me, that's even more egregious because it's a button and it's incredibly obvious that you should be clicking. **\[05:41\]** **Mike:** Yes, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Right. So, yeah, I mean, another reason to get rid of click here is just it looks silly and this kind of would you alluded to with the buttons. But even outside of the button, to have a page where it's just click here for this, click here for that all the way down the page. It just looks really ridiculous and you **\[06:03\]** **Sean:** know what you're going to end up ranking for on Google click here now let's talk **\[06:07\]** **Mike:** okay so you tell us all about that how does it how does clicking here how does **\[06:11\]** **Sean:** the phrase "click here" impacts your SEO well basically Google and other search engines like context for links so if you say "click here to learn more", the context is not really clear on the link itself that you're clicking. Instead, you should be in your sentence, hey, we've got this fantastic blog article all about widgets, and all about widgets is linked. And so the phrase "all about widgets" is providing the context and the visual clue of the link being underlined in a different color and all of that is there to let the visitor know what it is and the context is there for Google to know, hey, this is a link and it's going here so it's going to add some authority to that site as well as **\[07:07\]** **Mike:** your site and it helps your SEO. Yes, and so Google is smart but it's not really smart enough to know that when you have a sentence that says, you know, to learn more about B-like water, "click here", and then "click here" is a link. It's not smart enough to know that that link is about B-like water because that's what was talked about in that sentence. Instead, what Google, by Google, I mean a search engine, wants to see is the thing that the link is about should be the phrase that's linked. So in the example I just gave instead of "to learn more about be like water, click here". I would write, "to learn more," or sorry, I would write, "learn more about be like water." And then the phrase "be like water" is the link. That way Google knows, okay, well, here's a link and the text of the link is probably the subject of it. **\[08:02\]** **Sean:** Exactly. And you know, the same thing that we're talking about, "click here", other common phrases could also be applied like learn more or read more. Now that's a little bit different. A lot of times a "learn more" or "read more" link or button will follow some summary text of on a listing page where you've got like for example a blog you've got an image you've got a title a little bit of summary and then it'll say learn more but the title and the image of this summary card are also linked. So those are providing the context. And the "learn more" is kind of just conventional at this point. Yeah. And it's not really going to penalize you unless it's the only link that's taking you from that point. **\[08:51\]** **Mike:** point. Exactly. That's right. Now there's also just just as a sort of a general rule of how should you go about labeling links. There is an organization called the World Wide Web Consortium which is a group of people from various large companies like Apple and Google and so on who sort of make a lot of the standard guidelines for how things should be done on the web. And by the way, just as a quick aside, we Sean and I are frequently talking about a content management system that we really like called Kraft and it was recently announced that the W3C that I just spoke of has adapted that CMS as their new CMS for their website, right? **\[09:36\]** **Sean:** Yes. So the body that is responsible for web standards has chosen craft CMS to be used to publish everything there is to know about web standards. Right. Pretty spectacular. They considered WordPress, **\[09:52\]** **Mike:** the big old WordPress. They considered another great CMS called Statomic that I've used many times and Sean's used and they eventually settled on craft and we were just thrilled by that because we're or big fans of the CMS. So, sorry, go ahead. **\[10:07\]** **Sean:** No, no, go ahead. **\[10:08\]** **Mike:** OK, so anyway, what I was getting at was the W3C has provided, this was years ago, but they've provided some guidelines as to how you should go about labeling links, and I'll just go through them quickly right here. There's only four points. What they say is when you're calling the user to action, use brief but meaningful text that A provides some information when read out of context, B explains what the link offers, C doesn't talk about mechanics so like clicking, touching, tapping, whatever, and D is not a verb phrase. So one of the way I sort of like to shorten that is when you're thinking about how am I going to label this link, imagine that there's nothing else on the whole page except that link text. Could you still be able to know what the link offers? So you can see how the phrase click here fails this test. If you had a page with nothing on it, but the phrase click here. And when you click on it, it pointed to Google. I wouldn't know that it goes to Google until I clicked on it. So that's not good. **\[11:16\]** **Sean:** This would be even more obvious in a list of links. Yes. So if you had ten links that you were sharing as bullets, click here. Next bullet, click here. Next bullet, click here. is that's that's the point that click here is not very helpful. So are adding in like this fantastic post about website standards. We're here. We'll learn about HTML. Each of these sentences or phrases **\[11:44\]** **Mike:** should be clicked. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And so yeah, I like to say, yeah, when you're thinking about it, what imagine if there's no other text in the page, you know, if you're linking off to the the website 101 podcast. Maybe the link should be called the website 101 podcast. Like that's the text that is linked, right? **\[12:05\]** **Sean:** Or you could occasionally make it a little bit more descriptive. Like this and to this episode on link starts here, website 101 podcast about, click here. Yep, sure. And that's the end of your link. So you can change the context a little bit, but make sure that it's something that is usable and easily understandable. **\[12:25\]** **Mike:** Absolutely, I'm not, yeah, I don't mean to suggest that it should be a boring sentence. It could be as exciting as you want to make your copy, right? **\[12:34\]** **Sean:** Exactly. Yeah. So, I kind of feel like we've covered most of what you can, what we need to say with Click Here. There are a couple of articles that we'll link to. One of them is written by Mike Mella a few years ago, I believe. And then there's another one by a well-known online magazine for web developers called Smashing Magazine. And they talk about basically the exact same thing, and it's called why your links never say click here. And it's from way back in 2012. Yeah. So we've been having this discussion for a long time now. **\[13:11\]** **Mike:** I can tell you that my article that we're linking to is my most popular article that I've ever written. that's the most shared, the most visited, people are very passionate about this topic, apparently. Which is good. **\[13:25\]** **Sean:** We'll definitely be sharing it and you'll get some more clicks next week when this episode gets really good. **\[13:30\]** **Mike:** Right. So one more thing I wanted to mention about why you shouldn't use the phrase click here has to do with accessibility. So accessibility is basically the practice of making your website usable for as many people as possible, as many audiences. and that includes people with disabilities, people with special types of machines, that kind of thing, and one common tool that people who might have visual impairments use is called a screen reader, where they can actually click through the website and their computer will read things out to them. And the way those tools work is they can click through the links on a page. So as they go through, their computer would read the label of the link. Now imagine if your page had only the text click here for every link, sure there's gonna be a set and surrounding it, but when that person clicks through to see what links are on the page, the machine is gonna say, click here, click here, click here, and it won't offer anything at all. Whereas if you label it things like the website 101 Podcasts, excellent episode about whatever, you know, they'll be, oh, okay, that's what that link is. Yeah, I do wanna follow that, and maybe they'll click on it **\[14:43\]** **Sean:** or, you know. Exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, accessibility, it's an important thing. Hi, I hope you're enjoying this episode. You know, we'd really love to hear from our listeners about suggestions for topics in the future. If you have any topics suggestions, please let us know. **\[15:01\]** **Mike:** Yeah, and if you have any guest suggestions, we'd also like to know those. Is there anyone you'd like us to have on the show and interview? Is there anyone we've had on the show that you'd like to have back and talk to more. Let us know. You can visit website 101podcast.com slash contact **\[15:19\]** **Sean:** to get in touch with it. And we're back and now we're going to talk about very briefly all the upcoming episodes that we've got planned. So this episode we're releasing next week on Tuesday, October 6th which is my waste birthday. Cool. So we're releasing this on October 6th and then we haven't recorded the other episodes yet but it's been a while since we had season three out and we just wanted to let you know that we're still around and we're still doing things. Yep. We're planning on recording soon the rest of our episodes and when they're all done we'll start released in the monitor by weekly schedule as usual. So some of the topics that we've got planned accessibility, which Mike just talked about. Yes. And we're going to bring in Metzuko Friedland. She just got hired on by Craft CMS to improve accessibility in the control panel. So it's not just the front end of your website that will be accessible, but the backend and why this is important. and I'm sure that we'll be touching on all things accessible. Yeah, I can't wait for that. So this will be a great episode. A complement to an episode from way back in season one that I did with Leah Alcantra and Emily Lewis about accessibility. **\[16:47\]** **Mike:** Right, that was great too. Yep. Yeah, and so following that, I don't know what the order is going to be, but another episode that we're going to be doing would be is about ways that you can improve your website without doing a full redesign of it. So very often people think, oh, my website is a total mess. I got to just dump $10 or $20,000 into it, I guess, and redo it. There are ways you can improve your site without doing that. And in fact, they're probably recommended because they will help avoid that reaching that point where it's too late and you have to redesign it. **\[17:23\]** **Sean:** Yeah, I mean, eventually you have to redesign a site anyways because the design gets dated or whatever, but there's a lot of things you can do to add some new life to your website and make it modernized and make it easier for you or your visitors to use. Another topic that we're going to talk about is analytics and not just Google Analytics, but alternatives to Google, and I recently signed up for a service that I'm going to talk about why I chose it over Google Analytics and why I'm spending money when Google is free. **\[18:02\]** **Mike:** Yeah, that's going to be really interesting. And we'll talk about a couple of other options **\[18:08\]** **Sean:** that are available. It's up to visitors or owners of websites to decide which one is for them. **\[18:15\]** **Mike:** Right, right. Another episode we're going to be talking about is about budgets. Now, we've touched on budgets before in a few other episodes, but this one's going to be explicitly about, you know, as a website owner, if you're sourcing service providers to help you with your website, what kind of budget, you know, should you be planning for? What is it that you're willing to pay for and not willing to pay for? You should know all that upfront. You should have, you know, actual, uh, maybe not to the dollar, but a ballpark figure of what you're willing to spend. **\[18:50\]** **Sean:** We'll tell you the benefits of all that kind of thing. Yeah, why it's important to have a budget ahead of time and why why you why you should share that budget with your web developer. Yes. I know a lot of people like to keep it close to their chest and not share their true budget because they're afraid the developers going to use it all. Yep. But we'll tell you why that's a good thing and and why you shouldn't be afraid of that. Yes. OK, we're also going to revisit website planning. And another topic that we just decided on today is red flags or how to choose a developer. And this is a topic that was suggested by Mike's wife. **\[19:32\]** **Mike:** We recently just a quick. **\[19:33\]** **Sean:** Because Mike is not a good developer. **\[19:35\]** **Mike:** No, so just briefly the reason this happened We're doing some renovation stuff on our house, and we've been interacting, well, she has been interacting with various renovation service providers, and it is amazing the differences you encounter, not just renovations, any kind of service provider that you hire, and web developer being no exception. So yeah, red flags to look out for, and when you spot them, you say, oh, maybe I shouldn't pick this person. We've got lots of advice to this effect. **\[20:06\]** **Sean:** And we hired a renovator or developer as well this summer and we did our patio out in the back. Oh, yeah. **\[20:14\]** **Mike:** That's right. **\[20:15\]** **Sean:** So maybe you have some stuff. I have some comments about that as well. All right. That's going to be a good one. And the final topic that we have confirmed, we have got a couple others after this. But the final topic we have confirmed right now is trust your web designers advice. This is from a designer who's in a Slack group that myself and Mike are part of and he's had some issues recently with a couple of his clients and he wants to provide advice about why you should trust your web designer. And that can be extended to developer or even contractors that you're hiring to fix up your house. **\[20:54\]** **Mike:** Right, absolutely. Yeah, that's going to be good. few of these episodes we just mentioned. We're hoping to have some guests, not just me and Sean, **\[21:01\]** **Sean:** to help us with the topics. It should be great. Yeah, so that's what's coming up for season four and thank you for listening. Thanks. Hey, thank you so much for listening to this episode. My name is Sean Smith, your co-host, and you can find me at my website, caffeinecreations.ca. on Twitter, caffeine creation that's spelled C-A-F-F-E-I-N-E-C-R-E-E-8-I-O-N. And also, I'm on LinkedIn, caffeine creations. **\[21:35\]** **Mike:** And I'm Mike Mele and you can find me online at blikewater.ca. And I'm also on LinkedIn and Twitter. My username is Mike Mele. That's M-I-K-E-M-E-L-L-L-A. Close Transcript Have a question for Sean, Mike, and Amanda? [Send us an email](/contact). [![Listen on Google Play Music](/assets/images/google_podcasts_badge@2x.png)](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWJzaXRlMTAxcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC5yc3M%3D)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/itunes-badge.png)](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/website-101-podcast/id1449510012)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/spotify-logo.png)](https://open.spotify.com/show/3rmSM1R9t6q1U8DmYWJRSO?si=NrYPMgDaRV6Dd56PjEaPow)### Season 04 - 1 [ 'Click Here' Hurts Your SEO and UX: Why It's Time to Change](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-1/click-here/) - 2 [ How to Talk to Your Web Developer: Communication Tips for Clients](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-2/how-to-talk-to-your-web-developer/) - 3 [ Red Flags](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-3/red-flags/) - 4 [ Content Strategy](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-4/content-strategy/) - 5 [ Accessibility](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-5/accessibility/) - 6 [ Improving Your Website Without a Redesign: Content Audit, Usability Testing & More](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-6/how-to-improve-your-website-without-doing-a-full-redesign/) - 7 [ Content Marketing](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-7/content-marketing/) - 8 [ Alternatives to Google Analytics](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-8/alternatives-to-google-analytics/) - Bonus[ Listener Survey - What Topics do you Want to Hear More of?](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-/listener-survey-what-topics-do-you-want-to-hear-more-of/) - 9 [ Website Optimization and Speed](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-9/website-optimization-and-speed/) - 10 [ Exploring WordPress Website Development with Laura Bailey](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-10/wordpress/) - 11 [ From Novice to Bootcamp Instructor](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-11/from-novice-to-bootcamp-instructor/) - 12 [ Pimp Your Typography](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-12/pimp-your-typography/) ### All Seasons - [Season 01](https://website101podcast.com/season/01/) - [Season 02](https://website101podcast.com/season/02/) - [Season 03](https://website101podcast.com/season/03/) - [Season 04](https://website101podcast.com/season/04/) - [Season 05](https://website101podcast.com/season/05/) - [Season 06](https://website101podcast.com/season/06/) - [Season 07](https://website101podcast.com/season/07/) - [Season 08](https://website101podcast.com/season/08/) - [Season 09](https://website101podcast.com/season/09/) <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-END\]\]>