Why “Click Here for Link” Is Killing Your SEO (And What to Do Instead)

If you’ve spent any time building a website, writing blog posts, or managing content for a business, you’ve almost certainly typed the words “click here” at some point. It feels natural. It’s direct. It tells people exactly what to do. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: using “click here” as your anchor text — the visible, clickable words in a hyperlink — is one of the most quietly damaging habits in digital content, and it’s been quietly undermining websites for years.

This post is going to walk you through exactly why that is, what Google actually wants to see, and how you can rethink every link you write going forward so that both search engines and real human readers get more value out of your content.

The Problem With Generic Anchor Text

Let’s start with the basics. When you create a hyperlink on a webpage, you’re doing two things at once. You’re giving a visitor a path to more information, and you’re sending a signal to search engines about what that linked page contains. The anchor text — the words you highlight and turn into a link — is one of the most direct signals Google uses to understand context.

When your anchor text says “click here,” it says absolutely nothing about the destination. Google’s crawlers read it and get zero useful information. They know someone is being asked to click something, but they have no idea what that something is about. Over billions of pages, across countless links, this becomes a significant problem for how content gets indexed and ranked.

Think of it this way. If you were cataloguing a library and someone handed you a box of books with every spine labeled “click here,” you’d have no idea how to organize them. That’s essentially what generic anchor text does to search engines.

Beyond SEO, there’s a usability argument too. Screen readers used by visually impaired users often read out a list of all the links on a page so the user can navigate quickly. If every link says “click here” or “read more,” that list becomes completely useless. Descriptive anchor text is not just good for rankings — it’s a basic standard of accessible, inclusive web design.

What Google Has Said About This

Google has been remarkably consistent on this point for a long time. Their own Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide explicitly advises against using generic anchor text like “click here,” “page,” “article,” or “link.” They recommend that anchor text be descriptive, concise, and relevant to the page being linked.

John Mueller, Google’s Search Advocate, has addressed this in various public forums over the years, noting that descriptive anchor text helps Google understand the content of the pages being linked and helps users decide whether following a link is worth their time. Both of those things matter.

Google’s algorithms have become sophisticated enough to infer context from surrounding text, so “click here” in a well-written paragraph about, say, solar panel installation might still get some contextual credit. But you’re leaving ranking power on the table and relying on Google to do work that you could simply do yourself with three extra words.

The Anatomy of a Great Link

So what does good anchor text actually look like? There are a few principles worth understanding.

The first is relevance. Your anchor text should clearly describe what the reader will find when they click. If you’re linking to a guide about sourdough bread baking, your anchor text should say something like “sourdough bread baking guide” or “how to make sourdough at home” — not “click here to learn more.”

The second is specificity. Vague phrases like “this article,” “our page,” or “more information” are only marginally better than “click here.” They tell the reader something is coming but don’t say what. Aim for language specific enough that someone could read the anchor text alone and have a reasonable idea of the destination.

The third is naturalness. One of the things Google has cracked down on over the years is over-optimized anchor text — links that sound robotic and keyword-stuffed because someone was trying too hard to game search rankings. Good anchor text reads like natural language. It fits into a sentence the way any other phrase would. The goal is clarity, not manipulation.

The fourth is appropriate length. Anchor text doesn’t need to be a full sentence. One to five words is usually ideal. Enough to be descriptive, short enough to be scannable.

Why This Habit Is So Hard to Break

Here’s something worth acknowledging: the “click here” habit isn’t irrational. It comes from a real instinct to guide users. In the early days of the web, hyperlinks weren’t always visually obvious, and telling someone to click felt necessary. That era has largely passed — most users today understand that colored, underlined text is clickable — but the habit stuck around long after the need for it faded.

There’s also a copywriting tradition of using action-oriented language in calls to action. “Click here,” “buy now,” “sign up today” — these phrases have their place in buttons, forms, and promotional content where you want a sharp, direct push. The mistake is carrying that CTA energy into the body of editorial content, where links serve an informational rather than transactional purpose.

Once you start noticing “click here” in content you read, you’ll see it everywhere. It’s deeply ingrained. Breaking the habit takes conscious effort, especially when you’re writing quickly or managing large volumes of content.

How to Rewrite Your Links Right Now

Let’s get practical. If you have existing content with generic anchor text, here’s how to approach fixing it.

Start by auditing your pages. Most content management systems have a way to search your posts for specific text. Search for “click here,” “read more,” “learn more,” “this article,” and “this page.” Make a list of every instance.

For each one, ask yourself a simple question: what would someone find if they followed this link? The answer to that question is usually your new anchor text. If the link goes to a study about the effects of sleep deprivation on productivity, your anchor text might become “research on sleep deprivation and productivity” or “a major study on how poor sleep affects work performance.” Both of those tell the reader and the search engine something meaningful.

For new content you write going forward, develop a habit of drafting your links with descriptive text from the start. It’s much easier to do it right the first time than to go back and fix it later. As you write a sentence that contains a link, pause and ask whether the anchor text describes the destination. If it doesn’t, revise it before moving on.

Internal vs. External Links: Does It Change the Rules?

The principles of good anchor text apply whether you’re linking to a page on your own website or to a page on someone else’s. However, the strategic considerations are a little different.

For internal links — links from one page on your site to another — descriptive anchor text is particularly powerful. It helps Google understand how your content is organized and what each page is about. It can help distribute “link equity” across your site more effectively, boosting the visibility of pages that might not have many external links pointing to them. If you have a detailed guide buried three clicks deep, linking to it from popular pages with strong anchor text is one of the best ways to help it get found and ranked.

For external links — links pointing to other websites — descriptive anchor text still matters for user experience and clarity, but it’s less about your own SEO. What you’re doing with external links is adding value for your readers and signaling to Google that your content is well-researched and connected to authoritative sources. The anchor text here should make it easy for a reader to decide whether they want to leave your site and visit the destination.

What About “Read More” and “Learn More”?

These phrases occupy an interesting middle ground. They’re slightly better than “click here” because they at least suggest an action and an expectation of content. But they still fail the test of descriptiveness.

“Read more about our return policy” is significantly better than just “read more.” You’ve added the critical context that was missing. The same logic applies to “learn more about organic coffee farming” versus just “learn more.” The action phrase can stay as long as you attach the subject to it.

When you’re designing navigation links or buttons — elements that aren’t embedded in editorial prose — “learn more” is sometimes acceptable if it’s paired with a clear heading or visual context that makes the destination obvious. But in body text, there’s almost never a good reason not to be specific.

The Broader Picture: Links as Editorial Judgment

Here’s a perspective shift that might help you write better links in the future. Every link you include in a piece of content is a form of editorial judgment. You’re saying to your reader: this other thing is worth your time. You’re vouching for it. That implicit endorsement is more meaningful when the anchor text communicates what you’re endorsing.

Generic anchor text is like recommending a restaurant but refusing to say what kind of food they serve or why you like it. Descriptive anchor text is like saying “the best wood-fired pizza in the neighborhood” — suddenly the recommendation has value and the person receiving it can make an informed decision.

When you approach every link as a piece of editorial communication, the anchor text almost writes itself. You’re not optimizing for an algorithm; you’re trying to give your reader the clearest, most useful signal possible. The SEO benefit is a natural consequence of doing that well.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Even writers who have moved away from “click here” often fall into related traps. Here are a few worth watching for.

Linking full URLs as anchor text is a common one. A raw URL like “https://www.example.com/guide/organic-farming-practices-for-beginners” might be technically descriptive, but it’s visually cluttered, hard to read, and often truncated in ways that remove the descriptive parts. Always use clean, human-readable anchor text over raw URLs in editorial content.

Using the same anchor text for different destinations creates confusion for both readers and search engines. If two links in one article both say “gardening tips” but lead to different pages, Google gets mixed signals and users may not understand the distinction. Keep anchor text unique when links lead to different places.

Over-stuffing anchor text with keywords looks manipulative and can actually work against you. There was a time when site owners would build large numbers of links with exact-match keyword anchor text to try to rank for specific terms. Google has become very good at identifying this pattern and treating it as a spam signal. Natural language in anchor text protects you from this.

Ignoring anchor text on images is a subtler mistake. When an image contains a link, the alt text of that image functions as the anchor text for SEO purposes. If your image alt text says “photo1” or is left blank, you’re losing a linking opportunity and potentially sending an unhelpful signal.

Making It Stick: A Simple Framework

If you want a quick rule of thumb to keep with you as you write, here it is: before you finalize any link, read the anchor text out loud and ask whether a stranger with no context would have a reasonable idea of what’s on the other side.

If the answer is yes, you’re probably in good shape. If the answer is no — if you’re relying on surrounding sentences to do the work that the anchor text should be doing — revise it.

You can also borrow a technique from newspaper subheadings. Imagine your anchor text had to stand alone, pulled out of its context and placed in a list of all the links on your page. Would it still make sense? Would it still be useful? If not, it needs more specificity.

The Long-Term Payoff

Fixing your anchor text strategy won’t produce overnight results. SEO rarely does. But over time, as Google’s crawlers revisit your pages and build a more accurate picture of your content and its connections, you should see improvements in how individual pages are understood and surfaced in search results.

More immediately, you’ll notice that your content reads better. Descriptive links are more satisfying to encounter as a reader. They signal care and competence. They make your writing feel like it was crafted for humans, not scraped together for algorithms — and paradoxically, content that reads well for humans tends to perform better in search over the long run.

There’s also a cumulative effect. Every piece of content you publish with strong internal linking and descriptive anchor text adds another layer to your site’s topical architecture. Over months and years, this builds into a meaningful structural advantage.

The takeaway is simple but worth repeating: the words you choose to hyperlink are not a minor formatting detail. They’re a substantive editorial decision with real consequences for how your site is understood, ranked, and experienced. Replace “click here” with something that actually says something — and watch that small change multiply across everything you publish.