Use helpful text in your hyperlinks
Basically, you should make sure that your hyperlinks contain text that is descriptive of the page you are linking to. This seems obvious, but if you're not thinking about it, you may do something like the following:
<a href="page url">Click here</a> to view the optimization tool.
When you have a link like the one above, you are really saying that your page is about "click here". When in fact, it is about an "optimization tool". So a better link would be:
Click here to <a href="page url">view the optimization tool.</a>.
Why does this matter? There are two reasons:
- It can improve your search engine rankings. Some search engines will use the text in hyperlinks to help determine the relevancy of a page. So the first example tells the search engine your page is "relevant" for the search term "click here", while the second example tells the search engine your page is "relevant" for the term "optimization tool".
- Website visitors with physical disabilities may have a hard time following links like the first example. The reason is that users with some handicaps may view a web page by "tabbing" through the hyperlinks, and looking at the text of the link.
|
