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Rule · Links and headings

Anchor text is descriptive

SEO-LINK-03C2 Recommended· w4

Class
C2 Recommended
Weight
4
Severity on fail
major
Applies to
Google

Scope and evidence

Evaluated on page (P). The book marks this requirement DOCUMENTED RECOMMENDATION, SEARCH-ENGINE-SPECIFIC.

Links named only through aria-label are reported as info (aria_label_only): Google's documentation does not say whether it reads them as anchor text.

Fail conditions

Each condition has a stable code and a reason template. The evaluator fills the placeholders from observed values only; no sentence in a report is generated.

  • generic_text

    {n} links on {url} use generic anchor text such as “{text}” (pointing to {target}). Google lists text like this as a bad example and recommends anchor text that is descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to both pages.

  • empty_text

    {n} links on {url} have neither text nor image alt text, for example the link to {target}. Google notes that alt text is useful as anchor text when an image is used as a link.

Informational observations

  • aria_label_only

    {n} links on {url} are named only through aria-label, for example the link to {target}. Google's documentation does not say whether it reads aria-label as anchor text.

The documented fix

Describe the destination in the link text; give linked images descriptive alt text.

Sources, quoted

These are the passages the rule rests on, stored once in the knowledge base and emitted exactly as written. A citation marked for specific conditions appears only on findings with those codes.