Manifesto: Descriptive Nature of Links
There are essentially two elements of a hypertext link. One is the destination, the place the link takes you. The other is the text of the link itself, the actual words which make up the thing you click on. The latter should, almost without exception, be a descriptive word or phrase that describes the former. That is, the text should describe the destination. For style points, work the link description elegantly into running text.
What one should never, ever do is to link after the fashion of, "To read some high-quality reviews, click here." Bad writer! Potty outside! "Here" does nothing whatsoever to describe the destination; it could be used to describe a link to literally anywhere.
Here's a better version: "Visit Metacritic for high-quality reviews."
Or, perhaps even better than that: "Metacritic features high-quality movie reviews."
This post is part of the jefftidball.com Manifesto.
Comments
"Here" does nothing whatsoever to describe the destination; it could be used to describe a link to literally anywhere.
In fact, it most aptly describes "here," and we're already here! So it's just about the worst possible link text. Even "there" would be better.
By the way, there's a third element - somewhat new on the scene, but quickly gaining popularity: the "title" attribute which is displayed (by most browsers) in a cutesy yellow "tool tip" when the cursor is over the link. Some diehards use this for making the link even more descriptive. Since it's essentially parenthetical information, I usually use it to make silly and/or foul-mouthed jokes that are completely off-topic.