By ID/Name VS. xpath Vs. link text

Id	Detail
Using an element ID or name locator	Most efficient in terms of test performance Makes your test code more readable, assuming the ID or name within the page source is well-named
using XPath	XPath statements take longer to process since the browser must run its XPath processor If the page source does not have an ID or name attribute you may have no choice but to use an XPath locator. With XPath (and DOM) you can locate an object with respect to another object on the page. For example, if there is a link that must occur within the second paragraph within a <div> section, you can use XPath to specify this. With ID and name locators, you can only specify that they occur on the page that is, somewhere on the page. If you must test that an image displaying the company logo appears at the top of the page within a header section, XPath may be the better locator.
Using link text	Locating via a link’s text is often convenient and performs well. If the link’s text is likely to change frequently, locating by the <a> element would be the better choice.