Outgoing Links with Non-Descriptive Anchor Text: How to Fix It

This check flags outgoing links, both to other sites and other pages on yours, whose anchor text is vague filler like "click here," "read more," "this," or a bare URL. Anchor text is a ranking and relevance signal for the destination and a navigation cue for users, so generic anchors waste both. The stake: search engines use anchor text to understand what the linked page is about, and "click here" tells them nothing.

Outgoing versus internal: why this check is separate

There's a companion check for non-descriptive anchors on internal links. This one is about the links leaving a page, including external ones. The distinction matters because the fix and the risk profile differ. On internal links, a weak anchor mostly wastes a relevance signal you control. On external links, a vague anchor also fails to set user expectations before they leave your site, and a bare-URL anchor can look spammy or auto-generated. Either way, the destination loses the descriptive context the anchor should have carried.

Non-descriptive anchors cluster around a handful of lazy phrases. "Click here," "read more," "learn more," "here," "this link," "continue," and pasted raw URLs are the repeat offenders. None of them describe where the link goes.

A real failing example

Here's a paragraph where every outgoing link is anchored on filler. A crawler flags all three:

<p>We benchmarked five crawlers this year.
  <a href="https://tool-vendor.com/report">Click here</a>
  to see the vendor's report. You can also
  <a href="/guides/crawl-budget/">read more</a>
  about the topic, or check
  <a href="https://example.org/data">https://example.org/data</a>
  for the raw numbers.</p>

Nothing in those anchors tells a user or a search engine what's on the other side. The fix moves the description into the anchor:

<p>We benchmarked five crawlers this year.
  See the vendor's
  <a href="https://tool-vendor.com/report">2026 crawler performance report</a>,
  our
  <a href="/guides/crawl-budget/">guide to optimizing crawl budget</a>,
  or the
  <a href="https://example.org/data">raw benchmark dataset on Example.org</a>.</p>

Each anchor now names its destination. Users know what they'll get, and the linked pages receive a relevant text signal.

Filler anchors and their descriptive replacements

The pattern is always the same: describe the destination in three to six words, front-loading the meaningful terms.

How to detect it

1. Screaming Frog: run Bulk Export > Links > All Outlinks, open in a spreadsheet, and filter the Anchor column for "click here," "read more," "here," "this," "learn more," and blanks. Sort to see how widespread each phrase is.
2. Bare-URL detection: in the same export, add a helper column flagging any anchor that starts with http; those are pasted-URL anchors that should be rewritten.
3. Empty-anchor check: anchors with no text at all are the extreme case. Screaming Frog's Content > Anchor Text and the empty-anchor filter catch links wrapped only around an image or icon.
4. Google Search Console: GSC's Links > Top linking text report shows the anchor phrases pointing at your pages. If "click here" or "read more" dominate, that's the aggregate symptom of this problem across the site.

How to fix it

Rewrite each flagged anchor so the linked text describes the destination. Keep it natural and concise, front-load the descriptive keywords, and avoid stuffing the same exact-match phrase into every link. For external links, the anchor should set honest expectations about what the user will find off-site. For icon or image links that have no text, add descriptive text or a proper aria-label so both users and crawlers understand the target. After editing, re-export outlinks and confirm the filler phrases are gone.

For the strategy behind good anchors, see our anchor text best practices guide, the companion check on non-descriptive internal anchor text, and the check for internal links with no anchor text for the empty-anchor edge case.

FAQ

Does anchor text on external links even help my SEO?

The anchor text you use passes a relevance signal to the destination, so it primarily helps the site you're linking to. For your own page, the benefit is clarity and trust: descriptive anchors improve user experience and reduce pogo-sticking, which supports your engagement metrics. It's good practice regardless of who receives the ranking signal.

Is "click here" ever acceptable?

Rarely, and only where the surrounding sentence already carries all the description. Even then, moving the descriptive words into the anchor is stronger and more accessible for screen-reader users who navigate by pulling a list of links out of context.

Should I use exact-match keywords in every anchor?

No. Descriptive is not the same as keyword-stuffed. Vary your phrasing naturally. Repeating the identical exact-match anchor across many links reads as manipulation and can look unnatural, especially on external links.

What about bare URLs as anchors?

A pasted URL like https://example.org/data is technically an anchor but a poor one: it's hard to read, carries no descriptive keywords, and looks auto-generated. Replace it with a short phrase describing the page.

How is this different from the internal non-descriptive anchor check?

That check looks only at links between your own pages. This one covers links leaving the page, including external destinations. A page can trip both; fix them together by making every anchor, inbound or outbound, name its target.