"Skip to Content" is it the new "Click Here"?

Hi,

I refer to:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20-20051123/Overview.html#navigation-mechanisms-skip

I am just a little concerned about the wording that is used to skip
navigational elements to get to the main content. It is common to use "Skip
to content", "skip navigation" and similar othe phrases. However the problem
I find with this approach is that it is not Search Engine Friendly. Would it
not be better to encourage developers to use more descriptive text that is
different for each page. For example if there is a webpage about say
"Assistive Technologies" and the main content begins with a h1 header with
the words "Assistive Technologies", would it not be better to use the words:
"Skip to Assistive Technologies Content" or "Go to Assistive Technologies
Content"? I say this because from an SEO perspective the target keywords of
a page should be higher up on the page. To illustrate the problems faced by
Search Engines please see the following search queries entered into Search
engines where I am looking for information on "Skip to Content" issues:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=skip+to+content&meta=

http://www.search.com/search?tag=se.fd.box.main.search&q=skip+to+content

http://search.lycos.com/default.asp?loc=searchbox&tab=web&query=skip+to+content

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=skip+to+content&FORM=QBHP

http://www.altavista.com/web/results?itag=ody&q=skip+to+content&kgs=1&kls=0

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=skip+to+content&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF-8

As you can see hardly any of the search results returned in the above search
engines for the term "Skip to content" return pages about "Skip to content".

It seems clear to me that any link that has generic words for the link text
such as "Skip to content" or "Click Here" is not necessarily best practice.

What do you think?

I would love to recieve your opinions.

Kind Regards,

Ali Zaidi,
Final Year BSc (Hons) Web Development Student
University of Teesside, UK

Received on Tuesday, 20 December 2005 11:09:46 UTC