Google Says Anchor Text With The Word Here Is Bad Link Text

Lizzi Sassman from Google said in this morning’s Google SEO office hours that using the anchor text “here,” the text for your hyperlink, is simply “bad link text.” Instead, you should use more descriptive text for the page you are linking to.

She said this at the 20:14 mark in the video – transcription here:

The Question: “Gabriel is asking, is there any difference if an internal link is under the word “here” or if it is linked in a keyword?”

The Answer: “Hey Gabriel, good question. It doesn’t matter if it’s an internal link to something on your site or if it’s an external link pointing to something else, “here” is still bad link text. It could be pointing to any page and it doesn’t tell us what the page is about. It’s much better to use words that are related to that topic so that users and search engines know what to expect from that link.”

Personally, sometimes, it just flows nicer to link using the word here. But yes, for anchor text and link text, you should try to be descriptive with your hyperlinks.

Here is the embed of this video:

Often, I do use “here” because it sometimes just flows better in my text and I don’t write just for search engines.

Forum discussion at Twitter.