First - GREAT thread! I learned so much from this thread alone.
I have XML and HTML sitemaps on my site. The HTML contains links to each of the pages in the site, is very plain and only contains the links themselves.
The pages themselves are named for the keywords they address.
For example - if I had a site about men shoes, my sitemap might look like this
Mens Work Shoes
Mens Casual Shoes
Mens Athletic Shoes
I do not have any descriptive text except for the link anchor itself.
Are you suggesting using something like the following instead?
Mens Work Shoes
We have lots of mens work shoes. Take a look here, blah blah blah mens work shoes.
Mens Casual Shoes
We have loads of mens casual shoes available. You probalby wanna look here, blah blah blah.
shoes.Mens Athletic Shoes
We have more mens athletic shoes than we know what to do with. Check out our sneakers and blah blah blah here.
Yeah, you have the exact idea, however, be sure and not repeat what you have in the link in the description. You can mention ' men's shoes ' for example but don't use the exact links phrase in the description, as this doesn't help you. It is considered keyword stuffing and actually can take away from the link's effectiveness over a short time.
I would got with 2-3 sentences. Keep them simple and direct but, give a little information and insight on the product/service. It builds character that your customers can relate to, gives them more info on what you are offering to show them, ( which is ALWAYS A PLUS! ), and giving them proof that you actually know where the link goes and what is actually on the other side.
This builds security, trust, reliability, and confidence in buying from you because they get what you say they are going to get.
People are all about the ' magic sales bullet ' line that is going to make everyone brainwashed into buying their stuff. You really want to know what that is, I've just given it to you in a nutshell...it is about treating people with the same trust, honesty, loyalty and respect that you should want and expect from everyone you meet.
Think of it always from ' what you'd like to experience if you were the customer '. Also, think of whatever you do in life, not just marketing as the end result being based 100% on what you invest in it. It is like planting a garden, you will only get the quality of produce from it that you invest in the foundation that produces the end items.
If you start with great seeds, healthy, rich soil and take outstanding care of the plants by feeding, watering and weeding...you will be way more happy with the results. Business is the exact same way. You get from it what you put into it.
Take that into consideration when you are doing everything, especially writing links, content and copy, as these are the actual front line weapons in your front-end **************. If they fail to do their jobs, the entire chain of command falls with them, due to a proper website funnel being a domino effect of the worst kind. There are so many leading threads into the main line that any one of them could break the chain and take the whole line down.
When you take this approach, your whole business model will become air tight after reviewing how many leads you have open, just waiting to be pushed over.
