Link Text That Names the Destination

Service pages are full of short promises: a paragraph about a package, a case study blurb, a note about the process—then a small link meant to carry the visitor deeper. When that link says only “Learn more,” “Read more,” or “Click here,” the destination is invisible until someone already commits. Scanners hesitate. Screen-reader users who pull a list of links hear the same empty phrase repeated. Search engines lose a useful cue about the target page.

Nielsen Norman Group’s research on writing hyperlinks and on standalone “Learn more” labels, together with WebAIM’s guidance on link text and appearance, give a clear planning rule: the anchor should name what the visitor gets next. WCAG 2.2 Success Criterion 2.4.4 (Link Purpose In Context, Level A) sets the accessibility floor—purpose from the link text alone or from programmatically determined context—but strong service sites aim higher: purpose from the link text itself.

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Why generic anchors fail on service sites

NN/G’s Writing Hyperlinks article (Marieke McCloskey) reports that eyes are drawn to links during scanning. When those links lack information scent—a clear signal of where they lead—attention is spent on something that still requires reading the surrounding paragraph. In their eyetracking examples, participants often switched from reading body copy to inspecting links as navigation and section cues.

The same article shows why duplicate vague labels hurt assistive technology: a screen-reader “list of links” filled with “here” forces the user back into linear reading. NN/G’s later piece “Learn More” Links: You Can Do Better (Katie Sherwin) adds that repeated identical “Learn more” labels create uncertainty—do they go to the same page or different ones?—and that screen-reader and magnifier users cannot quickly glance at the preceding paragraph the way a sighted reader might.

WebAIM’s Link Text and Appearance guidance aligns on the writing side: avoid non-informative phrases such as “click here,” “here,” “more,” “read more,” and “info.” Even “click here to access today’s weather” should collapse to “today’s weather.” The phrase “click” is especially weak on touch devices, a point NN/G has flagged since early guidelines against “Click here.”

For a firm selling audits, retainers, or project work, every generic footer link under a service card is a missed chance to confirm fit—“See commercial kitchen ventilation packages” decides faster than “Learn more.”

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What good link text requires

WebAIM’s practical bar is short: links should make sense out of context, be long enough to convey purpose and no longer, and never be empty. There is no strict maximum word count; entire paragraphs as links are usually harmful because screen-reader users must listen through them. Single-character links are allowed in indexes but create tiny targets—padding and spacing matter when you use them.

NN/G summarizes three craft rules that map cleanly onto service-page planning:

1. Descriptive — Answer “What will the user get when they click?” Name the page, document, or outcome. Mention PDF (or similar) when format matters; the warning can sit beside the anchor if needed.
2. Unique when destinations differ — Identical visible labels imply identical destinations. If two cards go to different services, the anchors must differ.
3. Front-loaded — Eyetracking in NN/G’s link-writing guidance found people often look at the first two words of a link. Starting every link with “Read more about…” wastes that attention on filler.

NN/G’s Better Link Labels framing (the “4 Ss”) is a useful editorial check: specific, sincere (expectations match the destination), substantial enough to stand alone, and succinct—concision last, so you do not carve away the meaning that the other three require.

WCAG 2.4.4 still matters as the conformance baseline. Purpose may come from the link plus programmatically determined context (same sentence, paragraph, list item, preceding heading, or table cell). That means a “Read more” inside an article whose heading is correctly associated can pass the criterion while remaining weak for scanners and link lists. Planning for service sites should treat in-context compliance as the minimum, not the goal.

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Rewriting the patterns that show up in drafts

Pattern on the page	Problem	Stronger planning choice
Standalone Learn more under each service	No keywords; duplicates sound identical	Name the service or page: “Commercial electrical design”
Click here to download the guide	Device-specific verb; destination unnamed	“Download the 2026 maintenance checklist (PDF)”
Read more after a case-study blurb	Ambiguous scope (same site? full story?)	“Read the clinic redesign case study”
Linked bare URL with long query strings	Hard to speak and skim (WebAIM)	Human-readable title of the resource
Icon-only button with empty accessible name	Empty link for AT users (WebAIM)	alt or accessible name that states function (“Contact”)

NN/G’s “Learn more” article offers three recovery options when a draft is full of filler CTAs: replace with destination keywords; keep “Learn more” only if you immediately qualify it (“Learn more about kiln maintenance”); or make the section heading itself the link and drop the redundant control. For card grids, option one is usually cleanest.

Planning checklist

• No standalone “Learn more,” “Read more,” “Click here,” or “Here” in primary templates.
• Each distinct destination has distinct link text on the same page.
• Keywords sit at the start of the anchor, not after filler verbs.
• PDF, video, or external-destinations are indicated when that changes expectations.
• Linked images include alternative text that names the destination or action.
• Body links are underlined or otherwise distinguishable without relying on color alone (WebAIM notes WCAG’s non-color cues on hover/focus when underlines are removed).
• Hover styles are mirrored for :focus so keyboard users get the same cue.

Limits and tradeoffs

Descriptive links need accurate destinations. Overlong anchors that restate the whole paragraph slow screen-reader users—WebAIM warns that some listeners skip ahead when purpose is not clear in the first words. Marketing teams sometimes fear longer labels on mobile; NN/G notes that a longer, clearer label can also enlarge the hit target. The remaining tradeoff is editorial time: someone must open the destination page and write the label from what is actually there—Sherwin’s advice is not to skip that step.

“A link is a promise about the next page. Vague wording keeps the promise secret until after the click—exactly when service buyers are deciding whether the trip is worth it.”
— Windware Studio Practice Note

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Practical takeaways for your next website

1. Run a link-list pass: open homepage and top service templates, list every anchor in order, and rewrite any label that fails out of context.
2. Name destinations from the target page: write the link after you know the H1 and primary offer of the destination—not from the teaser paragraph alone.
3. Front-load service vocabulary: lead with the offer or artifact (“Pricing for retainer support,” “Book a discovery call”), then trim filler.
4. Deduplicate labels: if two “Learn more” links pointed at different URLs, give them different text; if they pointed at the same URL, prefer one clear control.
5. Check image and icon links: ensure accessible names describe function; empty links are confusing for keyboard and screen-reader users.

The next step sits in content planning, not only in CSS: treat link labels as first-class copy in wireframes and CMS fields so designers are not forced to drop a generic “Learn more” to close a card component.

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