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From: David Ashleydale
Date: Apr 23, 2013 5:42PM

Hi,

I've been involved in discussions on this topic in the past, but now I'm
just really looking for some general opinions.

We do tell our writers that the best links are the ones that have text that
exactly matches the title of the page they are going to. They really do try
to adhere to this, but it's not always possible. We do still end up with
some generic links like "Learn more", mostly due to space restrictions in
certain components. Also, it does sometimes make sense to have a kind of
"action" link to continue on to a next step such as reading a full article,
without having to repeat the name of the article.

I've been telling our writers that they should first try to use the exact
text of the title of the page they are going to, but if they can't, they
can use generic text links, but only if it's within some kind of
programmatically determinable context, such as after a header, inside a
list, inside a paragraph, etc.

And I've also been telling them that they should go ahead and give the
generic link a TITLE attribute that is more descriptive, such as
title="Learn more about online banking". Now, I know that people hardly
ever encounter titles on links, and it seems like they are just becoming
less and less used over the years.

My question: should I just stop the practice of adding titles to generic
links? Is it even worth doing anymore? There is a downside to using them:
when the link is updated, the page author has to remember to change the
title, too. It sometimes happens that they forget, so then the title no
longer matches the link. But the upside is that they could be useful to
someone that happens across them. I just wonder if that audience is so
small these days that it's not really worth the effort.

Thanks,
David Ashleydale