The content of your website: Use meaningful text links
In theory any element of a webpage can be turned into a link: buttons, images, portions of images, videos, entire sections of text. It is however more effective to use short and clear text links, something your visitors will appreciate, but also search engines.
Ranked from poor to good:
- More info / Read more / Click here – not very meaningful
- Click here for more info – is a call to action, but also not very meaningful
- (Click here for) more information on diy-saunas – contains a distinct keyword and links to a page that offers pertinent information
Why are text links recommended?
For human visitors:
It creates clarity and for a number of people text links are the only ones they can use. For instance, the visually impaired are also avid internet users, their browser reads aloud the webpage contents. This means, text is not a problem and for images the alt-segment of -tag is read out. After a simple command, links are read aloud in chronological order – this will only work if they are text links, and if they are relevant. A list with f.i. ten times ‘Read more’, is not very helpful.
For search engines:
The robots dispatched by search engines to grade websites, index and follow links. If there is an obvious relationship between said links and the contents of the page they are referring to, f.i. a link containing a keyword that is also present on the webpage – the webpage featuring the link will receive a higher rating.
Next blog post: the content of your website: calls-to-action