Why "Click Here" Is Killing Your SEO: Link Text Best Practices for Small Business Websites
If your audit flagged "generic link text," it caught one of the smallest-looking defects a website can have and one of the most overlooked - because "click here" and "read more" look perfectly normal to a visitor scanning the page. They're not free the way they seem. Every one of those links is a missed opportunity to tell Google, and a screen reader, what's actually on the other end.
What link text actually is
Link text (also called anchor text) is the visible, clickable words of a hyperlink - not the web address underneath, the words a visitor actually reads. In a sentence like "see our water heater repair services," the link text is that phrase. In "to learn more, click here," the link text is just those two words, and they say nothing about where the link goes.
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Why Google actually cares about the words in a link
Google uses the words in a link's anchor text as a signal for what the destination page is about - both links from other sites and links between your own pages. A link that says "water heater repair services" tells Google plainly what the linked page covers. A link that says "click here" or "read more" describes the act of clicking, not the content, so it hands Google nothing useful about the page it points to. Multiply that across every "click here" on a site and you've quietly thrown away a real, if modest, relevance signal on every single link.
It also compounds internally. A site's own internal links - blog post to blog post, homepage to service pages - are one of the more overlooked places small business sites bleed this signal, because they're usually written fast, in passing, at the end of a sentence, with the path of least resistance being "read more" or "learn more" every time.
The bigger cost: screen reader navigation
This is where generic link text does more damage than it costs in SEO. Screen readers let blind and low-vision visitors pull up a list of every link on a page and jump straight to whichever one they want, without reading the surrounding text - it's one of the primary ways screen reader users navigate a page efficiently instead of listening to the whole thing top to bottom.
Now picture that list on a page where every link says "click here": click here, click here, read more, click here, learn more. There is no way to tell which link goes where without abandoning that list, going back into the page, and re-reading the paragraph around each one - exactly the friction screen reader users rely on that list to avoid. A sighted visitor never notices this; a screen reader user hits it on every single page that does it.
The three patterns to fix
"Click here" / "click this link"
Describes the action, not the destination. Rewrite the sentence so the linked words themselves are the description: "download our pricing guide" instead of "click here to download our pricing guide."
"Read more" / "learn more"
Common at the end of blog post previews and service summaries. Almost always fixable by linking the actual subject instead: "read more about our tune-up service" instead of a bare "read more."
The raw URL as the link text
Better than "click here" but still weak - it carries no descriptive words for Google, and a screen reader either spells it out letter by letter or stumbles through it as one long word. Use it only when there's genuinely no natural title to borrow from the destination.
How to check your own site in under a minute
Read through your homepage and your most important service pages looking only at the linked (usually underlined or colored) words, ignoring everything else on the page. If a linked phrase makes sense entirely on its own - "get a free estimate," "see our service areas" - it's doing its job. If it only makes sense together with the sentence around it - "click here," "read more" - that's the pattern to rewrite.
How the free audit catches this
Generic link text is one of the checks in our free audit, run alongside speed, mobile-friendliness, and the rest of our website audit checklist. It comes back as a medium-impact finding naming how many links on the page use vague text like "click here" or "read more" - not a guess, an actual count from the page.
Frequently asked questions
What is link text (anchor text)?
Link text, also called anchor text, is the visible, clickable words of a hyperlink - the part a visitor actually reads and clicks, as opposed to the web address it points to underneath. In "see our water heater repair page," the link text is that whole phrase, not the URL it links to.
Why is "click here" bad for SEO?
Google uses the words in a link's anchor text as one signal for understanding what the destination page is about. "Click here" and "read more" describe the action of clicking, not the content on the other end, so they hand Google nothing useful about the destination page - a wasted relevance signal on every single link that uses them.
Does generic link text affect accessibility, not just SEO?
Yes, and for screen reader users it is a bigger problem than the SEO cost. Screen readers let blind and low-vision visitors pull up a list of every link on a page to navigate by. A page where every entry in that list reads "click here, click here, click here, read more" gives no way to tell the links apart without going back and re-reading the surrounding paragraph for each one.
How do I fix generic link text?
Rewrite the linked words themselves to describe the destination: instead of "to see our services, click here," write "see our full list of services." The link text should make sense read on its own, out of context, the way a screen reader user or a scanning visitor actually encounters it.
Is a URL itself acceptable as link text?
It's better than "click here" but still weaker than descriptive words, and it reads poorly out loud on a screen reader (which spells out or stumbles through the raw address). It's an acceptable fallback when you're linking to a resource with no natural title to borrow, but descriptive text is almost always available with a small rewrite.
The cheapest way to find out
Run the free audit below. We check your link text along with speed, SEO, mobile-friendliness, and accessibility, using the same tooling Google itself uses, and email you a plain-English report naming exactly how many links need rewriting. If something needs fixing, it's a flat $149 for your fixable speed/image/SEO/broken-link issue, or $299 for everything, with before-and-after proof once it's done.