Rankelle

Links that just say "click here"

Links on this page use text like "click here", "read more" or "learn more". The words in a link tell search engines and screen-reader users what the destination is about; these say nothing.

How to fix it

Rewrite the link text to name the destination — the page's subject, not an instruction to click.

When it is not a problem

A read more link under an excerpt that already names the article is a common pattern and only mildly wasteful. The stoplist is deliberately short so that a real word is not mistaken for a lazy one.

How Rankelle handles it

  • SeverityInformational. Often correct as it stands, and reported so you can see the pattern rather than so you can clear it.
  • DetectionDetected on a single page while crawling it, then grouped with the other pages under the same URL pattern.
  • GroupingEvery page with this finding under the same URL pattern becomes one cause, with a confidence taken from how much of the pattern is affected. 400 of 400 is a template; 6 of 14 is phrased as a question. Causes are ranked by the impressions behind their pages.
  • LandingThe affected URLs stay under cheap watch. When this finding is gone from all of them, the fix is marked landed without anyone reporting the deploy.
  • VerdictAt landing, comparable untouched URLs are frozen as a control set. Twenty-eight days later the two are compared, and the fix can come back as having done nothing — all four verdicts reach the report.

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