I know that using "here" for a link's text is considered bad, but if I want to persuade business- or architect-type people, what are the best arguments to use? I know it can have some effect on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but can anyone explain this and any other reasons in more detail?
An example:
The StackOverflow site can be found here.
Because the text gives the link no context. Semantically, you're saying that the url goes "here" which means nothing. Screen readers, search engines, or anything else that parses the page cannot tell where (semantically) the page goes, so it knows nothing about the destination aside from its url.
One reason is that using "here" links are bad from an accessibility point of view - often screen readers (like JAWS, etc.) have functionality that will pick out all links in a page - if they are not meaningfully named, the user is in a useless situation.
Well, you've just explained it yourself.
It may also have usability issues. Naturally, you would want to click on the object's name. If it's a text, you will have to spend time scanning the whole sentence watching out for underlined or differently colored words. In the latter case it's real bad and against the common usability guidelines to have links stand out from the rest of the text. With the example like yours, it will result in reduced readability of pages especially with some amount of links and consequently in lower productivity of the users.
'Click here', or simply 'here', often results in a smaller clickable area than a full description of link. This is annoying when if it is difficult for you to point on the link, like when surfing with an iPhone.
(I personally hate those web pages where the link to the second page of an article is just a minuscule '2' at the bottom, and there is no big 'next page' button.)
Since links are highligted (often underlined and a different color) using links that explains what they link to makes it a lot easier to scan a web page.
Jacob Nielsen has written a lot of articles about how people read web pages: Alertbox: Current Issues in Web Usability. The executive summary is that people do not read web pages like they read books. They scan for information and then read if they find what they are looking for.
Read this article from Dustin Curtis before you decide what text to use in your links.
Here is the answer.
I bet you thought twice before hitting that link
It's pretty clear from here which one is better
Visit the Stackoverflow site
or
Click here to visit the Stackoverflow site
The confusion (if you want to call it that) arises when you are actually trying to get the user the click on something, eg. click here for more information, but even in those cases it is better to not use the click here format.