Say what you mean. Link what you mean.

The “Does the ‘motorcycles’ link go to a page about motorcycles?” Test

If your link says “motorcycles”, then it should take me to a page about motorcycles.

Here is an example of making a link out of the wrong words, from Bank of America’s website:

The text is: “Introducing new Online Banking features. Simplify your finances – and your life,” and they have chosen to make a link out of the words “and your life.” This seems like a bad choice because just as a link whose text is “and your life” should take you to the And Your Life page. I don’t know what the And Your Life page would be. This means that I have to guess where it will take me and I should never have to guess where a link will take me. If this is the text: “Introducing new Online Banking features. Simplify your finances – and your life,” then the acceptable phrases to make links out of are “new Online Banking features” and/or “Simplify your finances”. It’s probably also okay to make a link out of “Simplify your finances – and your life,” although that kind of gives me the impression that I will be able to simplify parts of my life that are not financial and I’m pretty sure that that is not what they mean. So it should look like this:

Or this:

Or this:

Here is another example of not linking what you mean, which I found on Amazon:

At the top of Amazon’s homepage, it says “Hello. Sign in to get personalized recommendations.” This is bad because if you click on the “personalized recommendations” link, it doesn’t take you to a Personalized Recommendations page—it takes you to the Sign In page. Since it takes you to the Sign In page, the words of the link should be “sign in”. It should be something like this: “Sign in to get personalized recommendations.”

But action links seem more comfortable when placed at the end of a sentence, so it should look like this: “To get personalized recommendations, sign in.”

or this: “For personalized recommendations, sign in.”

or this: “Want personalized recommendations? Sign in.”

Any of those would be clearer. If your link says “personalized recommendations”, then it should take you to personalized recommendations, not to a Sign In page. If you’re going to take someone to the Sign In page, then the words of the link that takes them there should be “Sign In”.