The headings and subheads on your site pages let people know what to expect from the page they are looking at. The link text lets people know what they can expect from pages on the next level down.
How long should these text links be? Should a text link be two or three words, or as long as seven or eight words?
This is a question people struggle over endlessly. But there is really no need to get into too much of a tangle over this, so long as you look at it from the user’s point of view.
Here’s the short answer:
Link text should have as many words as it takes to make it perfectly clear to your readers what they can expect on the page that follows.
That’s a good start, and would put you well ahead of the seemingly disorganized way most people approach writing link text.
However, it does open the door to links that are fifty words in length.
So here is a quick qualifier:
Link text should be short enough to be scanned quickly and easily.
Looks good so far. But it isn’t quite enough. Because a strong link needs to do more than simply be descriptive and scannable, it also has to make the reader WANT to click.
So here’s part three:
Link text should build energy, drive action and make the reader want to click.
To keep things in some order, let me convert this jumble of answers into the three, short principles of good link writing:
- A link should make it abundantly clear to your readers what they can expect on the page that follows.
- A link should be scannable.
- A link should make people want to click.
Let’s look at these principles in some more detail.
1. A link should make it abundantly clear to your readers what they can expect on the page that follows.
Let’s assume plenty of people arrive at your home page. And let’s assume a valuable proportion of those people are first-time visitors.
For all but the simplest of sites, none of those first-time visitors will be able to achieve the task they have in mind on your home page. In other words, they will have to move forward to a second and third level.
It may be they are looking for information, want to sign up for a service or even buy a product. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you help them get on the right path. They haven’t been to your site before, they don’t know how to find their way around, but they probably know what they want.
This is why you need your links to be descriptive. They need to point the way forward, so your visitors can think, “Aha, that’s the way forward for me. That’s what I am looking for.”
So how long should these links be? That depends entirely on the task in hand. Here are some examples:
1. If I am buying chocolates online, have found the perfect box and am ready to buy, here’s the perfect link text for me: "Buy Now."
Yes, just two words. But they tell me all I need to know about the page that follows. That’s where I want to go.
There are plenty of times when a short link will do the job just fine. Here’s a one-word link that tells you all you need to know: "Home."
2. Now let’s say I am looking for Web site hosting for my own, new, online chocolate company. It doesn’t really matter which provider I go to, I can be pretty sure all of their sites will offer me the usual three choices, along the lines of: Starter, Standard and Professional, or words to that effect. Each of those headlines will be followed by some blurb and then the ultimate, lazy writer’s one-size-fits-all link: "Learn More."
Here’s what the writer is really saying to me: “I can’t be bothered to write a useful, descriptive link, so I’m going to leave it to you to do all the hard work.”
What would be a lot more useful to me, probably under the Professional heading and blurb, is a link that says: "Start here for an ecommerce package, complete with shopping cart."
That’s what I’m looking for, after all. So help me make the right choice first time by providing sufficient information within the text of the link itself. As I said at the outset, it’s not so hard to do, so long as you get inside your visitors’ skins and figure out what it is they are looking for.
2. A link should be scannable.
On to the second principle of good link writing.
Some people will look at that last example I used and say to me, “Hey Nick, be fair. The writer can put the stuff about ecommerce and shopping carts in the blurb, and then say ‘Learn More’ in the link.”
True enough. But imagine a page that is written that way (and there are plenty of them out there). What do you get when you look at that page? You get a lot of blocks of small blurb, all followed by the same two words: Learn More.
So as a visitor, wanting to scan the page, I get a forest of links all saying, Learn More. And I think, “Ah, nuts, I’m going to have to read all the short blurbs to figure out what’s going on here.”
I can’t scan blurbs. But I can scan links. So why not help me out here?
Far better that I can scan the screen quickly, find the links that include some key words and phrases I have at the front of my mind and think, “Bingo!” as soon as I see a matching link. (And yes, those key words and phrases in my mind will likely correspond very closely to the key word or phrase I used in the search engine to find your site in the first place.)
When you make your links visually obvious, they are wonderful things for people to scan. And yes, I favor links that are blue and underlined. Simply because almost everyone will immediately know what they are and what they do.
Look at it this way. If you have numerous links on any one page that all say "Learn More" or "Click here" or some equivalent, you’re wasting an opportunity. No two links on a page should say the same thing. When they do, you are simply being lazy and leaving the work to your visitors.
Much better to make those links long enough to be useful and short enough to be scannable. That way, visitors can come to the page, scan the major headings and links and immediately know where they want to go next.
3. A link should make people want to click.
Once your link is descriptive and scannable, add a little energy and action to it. We all know that conversion rates on Web sites are not particularly high. We also know that we lose a lot of visitors on each page ... many of whom could have found what they wanted on some other page, but we failed in helping them get there.
The simplest way to get some action into a link is to start it with an active verb.
So instead of a link that says, "Online Banking."
Write a link that says, "Sign on to Online Banking."
This is pure direct marketing copywriting. And for a simple reason: both the Web and direct mail suffer from the exact same conversion rate challenges.
So, don’t be proud, but learn form a hundred years of direct mail testing, and use active verbs to drive action and create energy.
Concluding thoughts
There are all kinds of things that end up influencing how we write text links. We may have to please the tastes of the marketing folks. We may be constrained by the demands of the design folks. And we may have grown a little lazy in our link-writing habits.
To do the job well, just write those links so they will best serve the needs of your visitors. Make the links helpful, useful and effective. Make them descriptive, scannable and active.
Nick Usborne is a leading authority on the subject of writing for the Web. As a speaker, trainer and consultant he has worked with dozens of companies and organizations, including Yahoo!, J. Paul Getty Trust, Intuit, Walt Disney Attractions, Merck & Co and the National Cancer Institute. He is the author of "Net Words," a must-have reference for both copywriters and writers of content online. Information about his speaking, training and consulting services is available through his site.
Nick is also the publisher of the Excess Voice Newsletter for Web copywriters and content writers.