Digital marketing, Direct marketing

‘Click here’ is dead, and here’s why

That’s it. We said it. ‘Click here’ is dead. In emails and across the web, you’ve probably come across the phrase a lot. Not only is it completely lacking in inspiration, it’s also no longer considered good practice – yet it’s still popping up everywhere. ‘Click here’ isn’t accessible or descriptive. In fact, it’s the opposite, and just plain ineffective. We’ve had enough, and now we’ll tell you why.

No context? No engagement

People usually only skim read a piece of text for useful content. Even if a link is styled properly (a different colour from the surrounding text and underlined) and catches their attention, if it only says ‘click here’, readers will have no idea where it’s going to take them. They’ll have to go back and read around the link to understand it properly. By which time, let’s be honest, they’ll probably have lost interest. It’s far better to use the name of the page they’re going to. Here’s an example:

It could be a one-way ticket to your spam folder

In emails, ‘click here’ and ‘here’ alone can trigger spam filters. Copy may only account for a small percentage of overall spam score, but why run the risk?

SEO? More like SE-NO

When it comes to webpages, ‘click here’ holds absolutely no SEO value. Google doesn’t understand the context of the phrase, so can’t estimate how relevant the link is using keywords. That means it won’t have any effect on your website’s place in search results. Because no-one would ever google ‘click here’, would they?

It’s no good for assisted browsing

Screen readers offer an option for visually-impaired users to skim through an email or webpage simply by listing all the linked phrases. Hearing an endless list of ‘click here, click here, click here’ is both incredibly dry and also poor in terms of accessibility. To understand the context of each link, a sighted person could glance back over text, but a visually impaired user would have to go back and listen to the entire page. Not user-friendly at all.

‘Click’ requires a mouse

You don’t click when you’re accessing an email or a webpage on a mobile, you tap. Keyboard navigation and voice recognition are click-free too. The bottom line is, there’s more than one way to follow a link. It’s restrictive to presume that everyone’s going to be clicking when you could just as easily link in a way that isn’t device dependent. All in all, something to steer clear of.

If you want to pick our brains for even more ways to improve your links, we’d love to hear from you. Just drop our general manager, Ian Reeves, a line or call him direct on 0117 317 7629.

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