Copyblogger has an interesting post up today that answers a question I’ve always had, does telling someone to “click here” help or hurt clickthrough rates on a website?

A Marketing Sherpa study looking at the use of “click” in anchor text, using baseline data from the link text “Continue here…” revealed the following:

• “Click to continue” had a 8.53% increase in clickthrough rate from baseline
• “Continue to article” had a 3.3% increase in clickthrough rate from baseline
• “Read more” had a 1.8% decrease in clickthrough rate from baseline

What does this mean for you as an affiliate?

I’d say it give you a good indication of how to write your text links and even what text to use on banners, buttons, quote boxes or whatever. For example, if you are using “Get a Free Insurance Quote” as a text link on your page, maybe you should use “Click Here for a Free Insurance Quote” or “Click for a Free Insurance Quote” instead.

If doing so gives you a nice bump in clickthrough rate making the change should be well worth it, right?

This article doesnt mention paid search, but Id be curious to know if “click here” would increase CTR on search engines as well. Also, I wonder if having click here in your title tag would increase visits from the natural results as well. Hmmmmmmm…..

Click here to read the full Copyblogger article, and click here to read the Marketing Sherpa article.

[Bonus: Another gem from Copyblogger - Do Your Recognize These 10 Mental Blocks to Creative Thinking. Top affiliate marketers are remarkably creative people (maybe not in a coffee shop sipping, poetry reading, watercolor painting kind of way, but in a business creative way)...read this article and see if you are mentally blocking yourself from being a more creative (and successful) person. Don't try to think outside of the box my friends...burn the box.]