Link names should be meaningful. Remove “Read more”-links.
By Lillian Medby
One: Open a browser window. Two: Click on a link.
Isn’t that what we basically do on the Internet? Isn’t a link synonymous with reading more about the subject? Why do we then clinge on to the ”read more” links?
Read more is a general, non-descriptive link. It says nothing about what will happen when you click on it, except that you can expect ”something more”.
Here are three arguments to use if you are stuck in a discussion with someone who wants to keep the ”read more” links for the sake of simplicity, because it looks better design-wise, or something else:
1. Remember the scent of information
”The users coming to your site all have one thing in common: their animal instinct. When a user wants to find something on your site, they are on the hunt. Just like a fox in a forest, they’ll be most successful when they pick up a strong scent.”
(From the report ”Designing for the Scent of Information”, by Jared M. Spool, Christine Perfetti, and David Brittan).
Users click on words which describe the information they are looking for. A user looking for information about kids having fever will click on a link with the word ”fever” in it. They will to a lesser extent click on a link called ”read more”.
2. Let search engines find your pages
Search engines should be a big consideration when naming links. Google uses words in links to build relevance, and links named ”read more” tells Google that the landing page is about ”read more”. In other words, if you name the link to your page ”read more”, you are telling Google that if someone searches for ”read more” your page should show up.
For example, the links should not be like this: ”Read more about kids and fever”, but like this: ”Read more about kids and fever”.
3. Have mercy on people with disabilities
Descriptive links are an essential part of WAI, guidelines regarded as the international standard for Web accessibility. In Norway, all public websites are obliged by law to follow WAI.
Why are descriptive links especially important to people with disabilities?
- Nonvisual users can easily identify links since links are tagged and therefore identifiable by software—for instance, search engine software scans pages for links and follows them to create an index of Web pages, and screen reader software offers a “links list” with the available links on the page. (from UniversalUsability by Sarah Horton)
- Descriptive links helps people with motion impairment by letting them skip links that they are not interested in, avoiding the keystrokes needed to visit the referenced content and then returning to the current content.
- People with cognitive limitations will not become disoriented by multiple means of navigation to and from content they are not interested in.
Read more about the purpose of each link from Understanding WCAG 2.0 (Web Content Acessibility Guidelines). Also check out WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative).