Best Way to Link to Articles

Should we include description of article?

[Whoa]

Has anybody experimented to find out which of these two option is better for Google search engine optimization and/or for human surfer clickthrough?

Option1
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List of articles where the article title hyperlinks to the article page. All the viewer sees is hyperlinked article titles with no description of the article.

Option2
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List of articles where the article title hyperlinks to the article page AND there is a short description of the article (40 words or so).

Thanks for any input.

[tedster]

When Google calculates backlink influence, they do not use just the anchor text, but nearby text as well. So I prefer to use short descriptions, not just titles, to send a very clear "signal of relevance'. In most cases I also feel that short descriptions are better for the user.

[kostis]

The more you can convince the user that the article linked is relevant, the higher the click through rate you will achieve.

K

[WiseWebDude]

Very good point, Tedster, there is no doubt that Google puts more relevance on anchor text IN a good-sized musing rather than a

stand-alone link.

I've noticed this as well and more people are catching onto this as well. Well, one good [better link]thing[/better link] is, it FORCES people to THINK instead of just slap crap down and hope for the best, LOL.

[edited by: WiseWebDude at 3:37 pm (utc) on Dec. 19, 2006]

[seoram]

Leaving Google, from the viewer's point of view the potion II is the best.
I have also seen that having links in the content rather than having it on the side bars makes a huge difference for google. May be this is something more relevant to option II