SEO: The "Click Here" Phenomenon

Click here for more information. 
Click here to win $1,000,000 dollars. 
Click here for a punch in the nose.

"OK, so each link leads you to the same thing.  Why?"  Teachin you a lesson, that's why.

Notice how the top-ranking result for "click here" is Adobe's PDF Reader download page? That's because somewhere in the ballpark of half-a-buhzillion websites link to that exact page with the exact words "click here" in (or as) the link text.  When done intentionally this is called "Google  bombing" and it's pretty old news . . . but it's when it's done as a mistake that interests me.

"What's the problem?  I like clicking here."

Yeah but where is, "here?"  As we all know, links are not like light switches that turn the Interweb forward or backward a step (that's called Stumble Upon); the whole reason that links have different colors and underlines is to give something a citation as well as transport the viewer to that source.  When Google sees you linking to your Photo Gallery as "click here" it initially thinks it's a page about "click here."  And if you don't have an informative Title tag on that next page, it might not ever figure it out.  Just because your page is full of pictures of blue, furry widgets, doesn't mean Google automagically knows it's about "the widget industry's photo gallery of blue, furry widgets."  Google's pretty much blind as a bat when it comes to JPEGs. 

"OK, Officer Obnoxitron, how do I find and fix all the times I used 'click here?'"

I was recently doing some Search Engine Optimization on a website and found that if you Google up "site:www.yoursite.com 'click here'" you can find all the pages in your site where you have used the words "click here" when you really should have used something more descriptive.  The particular site I was examining came up with 107 instances of the dread words.

... You can probably try this same thing with "next," "back," "read more," and "download" or whatever other vague phrases you fancy.

Switcheroo

Also, consider the reverse: If you're linking to a page about the "glyptodon" with a full paragraph of text about its eating habits, you run the risk of missing the point that the page is about the glyptodon and not each and every other word in that paragraph. 

"But 'click here' had such a good ring to it."

I know, it's hard to replace "click here" after all these years.  I try to use the next page's title or the best name for the file if you're downloading something.  You can even keep "click here" if you just move the anchor tag over to the informative words.

"Click here for more information," becomes, "Click here for more information about fruit bat soup."

See, isn't that more fun?