If a screen reader user lists every link on your page and hears "click here" six times in a row, your website has failed them.
Your buttons are saying nothing
Open any small business website. Scroll down. Count how many buttons say "Click Here," "Learn More," "Read More," or "Submit." You will lose count before you reach the footer.
These labels feel safe. They are familiar. Every website uses them, so they must work. They do not. They are placeholder text that stuck. Nobody wrote them on purpose. Nobody tested them. They ended up there because nobody stopped to think about what the button should actually say.
Your button text is the last thing a visitor reads before they decide whether to act. It is the final nudge. And on most websites, that nudge says absolutely nothing.
What a screen reader actually hears
Screen readers have a feature that lists every link on a page. A visually impaired user can pull up this list to jump straight to the section they need, instead of listening to the entire page from top to bottom. It is one of the most common ways people with disabilities navigate websites.
When that list opens on a page full of generic link text, it reads like this. Click here. Click here. Learn more. Read more. Click here. More. The user has no idea where any of those links go. Every link is identical. Every link is useless.
This is not a niche issue. The WebAIM Million report found that 15.2% of the top one million websites contain ambiguous link text like "click here" and "learn more." Those pages averaged 5.3 instances each. That is five moments on every page where a screen reader user is left guessing.
If you read the previous blog in this series, you already know that the Equality Act 2010 requires your website to be accessible. Ambiguous link text is a failure. Not a grey area. A failure.
Google is reading your buttons too
Every internal link on your website is a signal to Google. The anchor text tells the search engine what the linked page is about. When a button on your homepage says "View Our Services" and links to your services page, Google connects those words to that destination. It strengthens the relevance of the page for those terms.
When that same button says "Click Here," Google learns nothing. You have wasted the signal. The link still works, but the SEO value of the anchor text is zero.
Google's own SEO documentation explicitly lists "click here" as an example of bad anchor text. Their advice is clear. Write descriptive text. Keep it concise. Do not tell users to "click here." If Google themselves are telling you not to do it, that should be the end of the conversation.
Generic text kills conversions
Accessibility and SEO are reason enough to fix your button text. But there is a third argument that speaks directly to your bottom line. Generic buttons convert worse than specific ones.
HubSpot analysed over 330,000 calls to action and found that personalised, specific CTAs converted 202% better than generic ones. ContentVerve ran an A/B test replacing "Order information" with "Get your free quote" and saw a 38% increase in clicks. In another test, changing "Start your free trial" to "Start my free trial" boosted click-through by 90%.
The pattern is consistent across every study. Specific beats vague. Benefit-driven beats command-driven. First-person beats second-person. And "Submit" sits at the bottom of every conversion chart.
"Submit" is the worst offender. It is technically accurate and emotionally empty. Nobody wakes up wanting to submit something. They want to get a quote, book a consultation, download a guide, or start a project. Your button should say what happens next, not describe the mechanical action of pressing it.
What good button text looks like
Good button text passes a simple test. If someone read only the button, with no surrounding content, would they know what happens when they press it? "Click Here" fails that test. "Get Your Free Quote" passes it.
Here is the difference in practice.
- Instead of "Submit," write "Send Your Message" or "Book Your Consultation"
- Instead of "Learn More," write "See Our Work" or "Read the Full Case Study"
- Instead of "Click Here," write "Download the Guide" or "Get Started"
- Instead of "Buy Now," write "Add to Basket" or "Start Your Order"
The two-word test
The Nielsen Norman Group's eye tracking research found that users fixate heavily on the first two words of any line. Their F-pattern studies showed that people scan web pages by reading the beginning of lines and skipping the rest. This applies to buttons and links just as much as body copy.
A button that reads "Click here to download our accessibility report" starts with two wasted words. The user sees "Click here" and gains nothing. A button that reads "Download accessibility report" starts with the action and the subject. The user knows exactly what will happen before they finish reading.
Front-load your button text with the most important words. Start with the verb. Follow with the benefit or the object. Cut everything else.
This is not about being clever. It is about being clear. Nobody has ever abandoned a website because the buttons were too descriptive. But people abandon websites every day because they could not figure out what would happen if they clicked.
The bottom line
"Click here" tells a visitor nothing. It tells a screen reader even less. It tells Google your link has no purpose. Three failures in two words. And yet it remains one of the most common phrases on the web, alongside "Submit," "Learn More," and every other generic label that forces the reader to look around the button to understand what the button does.
Specific calls to action convert 202% better than vague ones. That is not a subtle improvement. That is the difference between a button that works and a button that sits there. Front-load your label with a verb and a benefit: "Download the pricing guide," "Book your free consultation," "See the full portfolio." The visitor should know exactly what happens next before they decide whether to act.
Google explicitly advises against "click here" as anchor text. Screen readers navigate by pulling up a list of links, and a page full of "click here" entries is meaningless out of context. Write every button and link as if it has to make sense completely on its own. Because for a significant portion of your audience, it does.
How we can help
Every website we build uses descriptive, action-driven button text. No "Click Here." No "Submit." No generic labels that waste your visitor's attention and your SEO signals. Every link and every button earns its place.
We build accessible, fast, conversion-focused websites that score 90 or above on Google PageSpeed. Full WCAG AA compliance, proper link text for screen readers, and button copy that tells visitors exactly what happens next. The details that most agencies skip are the details that make the difference.