Marieke McCloskey of the Nielsen Norman Group has an article titled Writing Hyperlinks: Salient, Descriptive, Start with Keyword.
The article’s key findings and recommendations for constructing hyperlinks in a web page or other browser-like application:
- The anchor text (the text visible on the page) should stand out from the body content.
- The text should accurately describe the page that it refers to, preferably within the first two words.
The recommendations are based upon interesting data on how users scan through web pages looking for context and information.