Link text should not be a URL
Using the destination URL as link text should be avoided for four reasons.
- Screen readers read the link text aloud, and URLs ofen are long and contain abbreviations that will be mispronounced.
- It is difficult to quickly determine what the linked resource is because words in the URL have to be isolated, read, and interpreted.
- Words in link text provide highly-weighted keywords to search engines. By using a URL, we're giving up the opportunity to boost our search engine rankings.
- URLs are usually long and may interfere with the usual word wrapping browsers use to fill lines with text. In our case, URLs will usually wrap at the hyphen in k-state.edu. If the ksu.edu variation of the URL is used, the URL will not be breakable and will appear on a new line.
Problem examples
- To view the CMS documentation, visit https://www.k-state.edu/webservices/cms/.
- To view the CMS documentation, visit https://www.ksu.edu/webservices/cms/.
To fix this error
Use the title or proper name of the linked resource as the link text. For example, the above example could be rewritten as: View the CMS documentation.