Ruby slippers; click 3 times?It’s one of the easiest of web practices and yet I see it violated every day. I’m talking about the W3C’s guideline to make link text meaningful vs. links that say “Click here.”

If you send me text to post on the web including a “Click here” link, I can guarantee you two things. First, I will gnash my teeth and maybe even wail. Second, I will exercise my web diva prerogative and edit your copy. I will do what it takes to turn it into a meaningful link. Fortunately it’s not hard.

But first you might ask, why isn’t “click here” meaningful? The answer is the context. In a particular rendition, yes, “click here” makes sense. If you are looking at it in Internet Explorer on a monitor, chances are it will make perfect sense.

But what if you’re a search engine? What are you supposed to be indexing? Search engines these days are smart, but they aren’t that smart.

Or what if your vision is impaired and your screen reader only renders links for the site? That’s the way many vision-impaired people go through sites, because it makes navigating the web much more efficient. The result is your reader says, “Click here.” That’s it. Click to where? And why? There’s no way to know short of reconfiguring your reader and going into a laborious process of wading through whatever else is on the page. What are the chances you’ll do that? And what will you think of the site in general?

So how do you, the web editor, make the link meaningful? Almost invariably the text that really should be the link is in a phrase right before or after the offending “click here.” Thus, “Click here to find out more about my church” becomes simply “Find out more about my church.” Better yet, summarize what this “more information” is. “More information” is often equally meaningless. How about “Information for church visitors” or “Church FAQ”?

What’s the end result of this simple change? All of your very different audiences will be happy. A search engine will have something to index, the screen reader will report accurately what the link is, and the person on Internet Explorer 6 will not only understand it, but will understand it more quickly. You will have condensed and clarified where the link goes. You’ll have made the link meaningful. It’s a beautiful thing.