As online visitors often jump from one link to another, you should treat your links like headlines. They should deliver your primary message in as few words as possible.
In fact, a recent study by Jakob Nielsen suggests the first couple of words in your links are imperative.
Nielsen reports: “Online reading is often dominated by the F-pattern. That is, people read the first few listed items somewhat thoroughly — thus the cross-bars of the ‘F’ — but read less and less as they continue down the list, eventually passing their eyes down the text’s left side in a fairly straight line. At this point, users see only the very beginning of the items in a list.”
