Why does link text matter for accessibility?

Screen reader users can pull up a list of all links on a page and navigate by link text alone. If every link says "click here" or "read more," that list is meaningless. Descriptive link text tells users where a link leads without requiring the surrounding paragraph for context, making navigation efficient for assistive technology users.

What makes good link text?

Good link text describes the destination or action in specific, self-explanatory terms. Instead of "click here," write "view the WCAG 2.1 guidelines." Instead of "read more," write "read the full accessibility audit report." The text should make sense when read in isolation, outside the context of its surrounding sentence.

Does link text affect SEO?

Yes. Search engines use anchor text to understand what the linked page is about. Descriptive, relevant anchor text passes topical signals to the destination page and helps search engines map content relationships across your site. Generic text like "click here" passes no useful information and wastes an opportunity to strengthen internal linking signals.

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Accessibility SEO

Link Text That Leads Somewhere: No More Click Here Dead Ends

By Brent Passmore May 26, 2026 4 min read

Updated Mar 9, 2026

The links list problem

Screen reader users have a powerful navigation shortcut: pull up a list of all links on the page. In NVDA, it's Insert+F7. In VoiceOver, it's the rotor set to links. The result is a flat list of every hyperlink, stripped of surrounding context: just the link text, one after another.

Now imagine what that list looks like on a typical website: "Click here. Read more. Learn more. Click here. Here. Read more. Click here." A dozen links, all saying the same nothing. The user has no idea where any of them lead without navigating back to each one and reading the surrounding paragraph.

Descriptive link text solves this completely. When the links list reads "WCAG 2.1 compliance checklist. eiSEO accessibility scanner. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines," the user can jump directly to what they need.

What WCAG requires

WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 2.4.4 (Link Purpose, In Context) requires that the purpose of each link can be determined from the link text alone or from the link text combined with its surrounding context. The higher standard, SC 2.4.9 (Link Purpose, Link Only) required for AAA compliance, demands that the link text alone is sufficient.

Meeting the stricter standard is worth the effort. When every link is self-descriptive, your content works better for screen reader users, for users who scan visually, and for search engines that use anchor text as a relevance signal.

Common anti-patterns

"Click here"

The most widespread offender. "Click here to view our pricing" should be "View our pricing," with "our pricing" or the entire phrase as the link text. The action ("click") is implied by the fact that it's a link. The destination is what matters.

"Read more"

Blog listing pages often use "Read more" below every excerpt. In the links list, every card produces the same "Read more" link. Fix it by making the article title the link, or use aria-label to provide the full context: aria-label="Read more about WCAG color contrast requirements".

Raw URLs

"Visit https://eiseo.app/docs/accessibility/color-contrast for details." Screen readers will read every character of that URL. Replace it with descriptive text: "See our color contrast documentation for details."

Generic "Learn more"

The polite cousin of "click here." Same problem, slightly better manners. If you must use a generic phrase, attach an aria-label with specific context. But descriptive link text in the visible content is always better.

How to write good link text

Describe the destination. What will the user find when they click? That's your link text. "Our accessibility scanning features" beats "learn more about what we do."
Be concise. Link text should be descriptive but not a full sentence. Three to seven words usually works. Too long and the links list becomes unwieldy.
Avoid starting with the same word. If every link on a page starts with "Our" ("Our services, Our team, Our approach"), the links list is harder to scan. Vary the leading word.
Make it unique. Two links on the same page with identical text should point to the same destination. If they point to different pages, the text needs to differentiate them.

The SEO bonus

Search engines use anchor text as a strong signal for what the linked page is about. "Click here" tells Google nothing about the target page. "WCAG color contrast requirements" tells Google exactly what that page covers and reinforces its topical relevance.

Descriptive link text is one of the rare optimizations that improves accessibility, user experience, and SEO simultaneously. eiSEO flags generic link text patterns during site scans: "click here," "read more," and raw URLs, so you can identify and fix them systematically.

Every link is a signpost

Think of links as signposts on your property. A sign that says "this way" is useless. A sign that says "to the barn" is useful. Write link text that tells people where they're going, because the best content in the world is wasted if your visitors can't find their way to it.