Thought on optimising the perfect keyword location link

[James77]

My site works a bit like a directory, so say I have a page called "Ice Cream Vendors" - on that page I would talk a bit about Ice Cream Vendors, then I will have a list of Ice Cream Vendor Locations.

My list of locations can be quite big depending on the product and the amount of locations they occur in - when you click a location, it goes to a page showing all "ICeCream Vendors" in that location.

So Currently I will have a table on the page a bit like this:

ICE CREAM VENDOR LOCATIONS
New York
Miami
Las Vegas

This is all perfectly nice, simple and usable - BUT it is not producing perfect keyword links - for perfect keyword links the list should be like this:

ICE CREAM VENDOR LOCATIONS
New York Ice Cream Vendors
Miami Ice Cream Vendors
Las Vegas Ice Cream Vendors

Now I have my perfect anchor links - BUT it looks rediculous and is NOT user friendly.

So What do I do?
1/. Build it for users and not have perfect anchor links, and loose in SEO?
2/.  Build a perfect SEO links and make it less usable and looking spammy?

OR

3/. Deliver the search engine the perfect SEO links, and the user the userfriendly version?

In this I mean I could do the following:
SE's (and screen readers I think would see):
ICE CREAM VENDOR LOCATIONS
New York Ice Cream Vendors
Miami Ice Cream Vendors
Las Vegas Ice Cream Vendors

Users would See
ICE CREAM VENDOR LOCATIONS
New York
Miami
Las Vegas

Now in my view I am doing nothing wrong - I am mearly giving the user the most userfriendly version and I am giving the SE more information on the link, that the user doesn't need.

So - In my view I am doing something that is honest  - but what are your thoughts?? Has anyone tried to do this?

Thanks

[James77]

In some cases my list will be upto 100 locations - to the user this looks really:
a/. Spammy
b/. Ugly
c/. Unreadable

It's an irritating situation - If I am going for option 2, what I am in reality doing is pandering to search engines over users - exactly the opposite of what you should do, and SE's are very clear on this as well.

You would have thought SE's would have figured a solution to this out by now as it must be so common - and as a user when I see lists like this which are clearly for SE's not users, then I get annoyed with the site.

I'd be interested to know if there has been:
A/. Any test done on such list types to see if SE's can actually recognise that although the anchor just says the Location, if the link title has the perfect anchor, do they take this into account.
B/. If there are any other methods that could be used to try and tell the search engines the full meaning of the links - eg something like a tag on the container holding the list.

[RyanKent]

Now in my view I am doing nothing wrong - I am mearly giving the user the most userfriendly version

Unfortunately Google does not share your view. They are extremely clear on this topic. They wish to see what users see without changes.

If your list is only three stores I would suggest a title of "Locations" then offer the anchor links as you have them in the second example. The options depend on how many locations you are trying to show. A list of links doesn't scale well. A search box, map, etc. may be a better option.