I think Bryan and the FutureNow crew are a bit frustrated by the research from MarketingSherpa study showing that "click here" was the most effective anchor text for inducing a click-through. (Off topic - If the web were to revert to a "click here" based link structure, it certainly would have an interesting impact on how the engines interpret anchor text.) Their experience suggests that there may be much better text to use when requesting a click, and it should be terrific to see how their testing works out.
- Just comment on this post or the ones like it at Copyblogger and Grokdotcom (coming soon), linking us to the landing page you want tested and telling us why you should win.
- Judges Brian Clark, Rand Fishkin & Bryan Eisenberg will choose 5 winners.
- To be eligible, contestants must have clear metrics and analytics in place, the ability to test (Google Website Optimizer is free, so no excuses), and the willingness to implement our suggestions.
- Contestants must have enough traffic to yield valid test results.
- For each of our winners, the judges will select a single link to be tested, then agree on three variations of that call to action (a.k.a., anchor link).
So - in the comments on this post, link to your landing page of choice and Bryan, Brian, and I will review them, choose a few, and we'll watch as the Eisenbergs work their magic and educate us all in the process.
Click here as anchor text? I have three words in response:
Accesibility & screen readers.
Unable as I am to keep things short & to the point, I would also add that the Sherpas study seems to be for emails - very different ball-game (and ignores the fact that some spam filters now block emails with too many Click heres.
I think you make a great point, Ciaran, though I do think that ordinary, less-savvy Internet users have quite a good expectation that as to what "Click Here" means & may be more comfortable with it than descriptive anchor text.
@Rand -- I think the engines would still do a pretty good job of pulling the proper results in a "click here" structure, given that they DO use text that is CLOSE (in proximity) to anchor text in their algorithms even now, correct? Wouldn't they just change the weighting of that particular component to give it higher value?
I have a small niche site which attracts a fairly novice crowd. I think of them as web 1.0 users. :)
I wrote 5 articles about my specific niche and all of them got 300+ reads in 2 months. They both contained descriptive anchor text and "click here" anchor text to the same links. I used the descriptive in the body of the article and "click here" at the bottom.
Using "click here" produced 10% more conversions. Maybe its because I am a terrible writer or my desriptive anchor text was not engaging enough to produce.
Is the 'click here link' isolated or is there text around it. I'm thinking that a 'click here' link followed by typical descriptive anchor would work well. I have no tests to back that up, but I would think the words around the link could play a part in what does and doesn't get clicked.
It is what people are used to reading "Click here"
Any other call to action requires some training and anywhere, you need education for users, CTR goes down
"Brian" and "Bryan" call up memories of the Bobs in Office Space.
"Oh hi, Bob! ...Bob!"
I would really hope you guys test our landing page. The traffic is quite decent but the conversions are pretty bad.
Our landing page: https://www.logodesignworks.com
Glad you posted this Rand, when I first read Bryan post on Grok, I was very confused at how this worked and how it all played out. This is a little clearer.
Quick question that might help you understand where some confusion is:
Is this aimed at SEO's or the General Public?
~Li
Li - good question - I think it's for everyone. Brian covers writing on the web in general and Bryan is mostly a user experience and conversion rate expert, while SEOmoz is clearly geared towards SEO, so there's a lot of diversity, which should hopefully make it even better :)
This should be fun. I can't wait to read the results and hopefully have Rand disect the information for us. Side note, those two brothers (Eisenberg) really know there stuff. I have read "Call to Action" a couple times and they really stepped up the e-commerce game with there insightful commentary. I have looked at a bunch of clients they have worked with and they practice what they preach.
-Dal
Keep in mind also that what we are talking about are calls to action... typically one focused bit of action-oriented anchor text at then end of the copy, not every instance of anchor text on a page.
Using the work "click" in anchor text does boost conversions, even with Internet savvy people like Sherpa readers. The key is to find out if something else works even better.
Looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with, this should be a very interesting test.
I have an additional suggestion (if I may be so cheeky)...
Looking at the 'calls to action' on your own blogs, here is what I see:
Copyblogger: Click to continue →
GrokDotCom: ...continue reading "Post Name"
SEOmoz: Read Full Entry >
Very different approaches! How about you guys put those 3 variations "on rotation" across each of your blogs... and then publish the relative results/click through rates?
All the best,
Paul
What were the results finally to this?
Descriptive anchor text doesn't have the same call-to-action power as "click here" or "buy it now".
I'd love for you guys to take a look at this presell I've been working on. https://mynichestore.info/offer.php
Love your avatar and username :)
Rand, did you read Brian Clark's article from a few weeks ago about 'click here' as anchor text? Brian refers to the Marketing Sherpa study in the post.
The comments on the post are interesting on both sides of the argument.
Interesting idea. And “click here”? It has always been my position those were the worst words to use to get readers to click through. Isn’t it better to use a text link of some kind other than click here? My landing page of choice is https://homeofficewarrior.com
Just realized I don't have the landing page you are looking for. I will work on one.
"Contestants must have enough traffic to yield valid test results"
Not that I want to participate, but this requirement reminds me about a question I always have: How much is good enough in web traffic? How do I know if a client ‘s or my own website have enough traffic? I know it depends on the specific industry, but is there any website that gives you an idea of the "ideal" web traffic by industry and region?