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Let Me Count The Ways: Enumerated Sphinn Wisdom

by Ruud Hein


After having looked at one week of Sphinn SEO lessons it's time to put a number on things.

SEO's, SEM's and other abbreviated people within our industry love, love, numbers. Clickthrough rate, how many positions up in the rankings, number of estimated searches per month, links per minute. Heck, even Google is into it: -6, -30, -950, -whatever number penalty. Our very own Tom Tsinas loves numbers so much he's created a series of "[insert keyword] by the numbers" posts.

numbers

Whether there're 4 reasons why we like lists, 7 ways to write numbered lists or 10 top reasons to avoid top 10 lists here are 44 enumerated pieces of Sphinn (SEO-ish) wisdom from the past 7 days:

5 x 3

For a total of 16 votes or an average of 3.2 votes per enumerated list:

3 x 4

For a total of 9 votes or an average of 3 votes per enumerated list:

8 x 5

For a total of 102 votes or an average of 12.75 votes per enumerated list:

2 x 6

For a total of 5 votes or an average of 2.5 votes per enumerated list:

3 x 7

For a total of 14 votes or an average of 4.6 votes per enumerated list:

1 x 8

For a total (and average…) of 10 votes:

2 x 9

For a total of 21 votes or an average of 10.5 votes per enumerated list:

12 x 10

For a total of 104 votes or an average of 8.6 votes per enumerated list:

1 x 12

For a total (and average…) of 12 votes:

1 x 13

For a total (and average…) of 10 votes:

1 x 15

For a total (and average…) of 3 votes:

2 x 20

For a total of 16 votes or an average of 8 votes per enumerated list:

1 x 22

For a total (and average…) of 9 votes:

1 x 25

For a total (and average…) of 9 votes:

1 x 104

For a total (and average…) of 1 vote:

Top 15 Enumerated Lists To Make

So what can we learn from this (forgetting for a moment that we didn't factor in day, time of day, wind velocity, number of characters in the title and amount of coffee consumed)?

  1. 5 [subject] : 12.75 votes
  2. 12 [subject] : 12 votes
  3. 9 [subject] : 10.5 votes
  4. 13 [subject] : 10 votes & 8 [subject] : 10 votes
  5. 22 [subject] : 9 votes & 25 [subject] : 9 votes
  6. 10 [subject] : 8.6 votes
  7. 20 [subject] : 8 votes
  8. 7 [subject] : 4.6 votes
  9. 3 [subject] : 3.2 votes
  10. 4 [subject] : 3 votes & 15 [subject] : 3 votes
  11. 6 [subject] : 2.5 votes
  12. 104 [subject] : 1 vote

A top 5 list seems to be a nice one to make. Short enough to quickly go through, long enough to provide value.

Image courtesy of Claudecf

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24 clever comments

Awesome compilation. That'd be good to see with other social news sites too…like Digg.

Utah SEO  #

Huge thanks for your great compilation and the inclusion of Code It Red.

Code It Red  #

Nice compilation Ruud, thanks for including me there… See you around!

Mr. Javo  #

i could just stare at your blog post all night long, with a big grin on my face. and here are the reasons why:

1. because i, too, am one of those crazy people who love playing around with numbers like that.

2. i like orange

3. because you gave me a shoutout

4. because it might finally get me interested in sphinn

5. because i'm so glad 22 wasn't the winning number!

isabella mori  #

I have never used sphinn though I see their little cute buttons everywhere.

I do like making lists though :) I usually go with 5 too, though not long ago I did an article "55 places to leave love notes" and it is pretty popular – so maybe double 5's might be worth checking out?

Chelle  #

That is a LOT of numbers. I am in to SEO and I don't focus on numbers that much, though.

Hardware Stuff  #

Thanks for the mention… I will be witting about this post on my blog later today. This is a well done article that took some effort to complete.

A Tucson SEO  #

WOW, I have to say this is a very comprehensive post, and very useful information! And I am not at all biased, even though I made your list. :-)

What is Your Landing Page Doing?  #

Great compilation.
i cant count how many hours it will take to read them all :eek:

Meethere  #

Thanks for the list of posts which you find worth reading:)

paulette  #

Great post and lots of really good posts. Thanks for including 3 of mine.

David Hobson  #

OK. The numbers game applied to Sphinn. Haven't really used Sphinn myself, but appreciate your application here, and the sharing of your stats and links.

Jacques SEOman  #

I love analytics like this. There's something just so fascinating about numbers :)

Thanks for including my 10 reasons why companies should engage in social media. I do realize now that I should have made it into two posts, 5 reasons … part 1 and 5 reasons … part 2. Would have been so much better :)

Hjörtur Smárason  #

Nice one..^^ Thank you for sharing this information with us..^^

Internet Marketing Joy  #

Thanks for sharing my blog post, "20 Uses for Twitter for Business and Government," with your readers!

Those are some pretty great links on your list…good stuff!

Scott Hepburn  #

I must agree with Hjorture, these types of numbers are fun to see and analize. Thanks for posting this.

Layne

Google Nemesis  #

Thanks for the compilation. I started reading some and I really appreciate it ;0

Hye Munar  #

Very comprehensive list there i have to say even if i do only echo all of the others :) . Thanks

Metaspring  #

Really pleased ya'll like it :)

Ruud Hein  #

Nice compilation Ruud, thanks for including me there

Cat  #

thanx for post and very useful information!

Msn  #

I'm really not too fond of numbers or that is what I always thought. Then I read this article and realized I was as obsessed with numbers as the next guy! Cool Article.

Eva White  #

Yeah, I noticed a lot of bloggers are so addicted with SEO… and sometimes most of them are really successful.

THanks for this post.

Petitehye  #

Nice spin you put on this story, Ruud. Serves to illustrate your point very well. The only way an SEO can truly quantify his (or hers) efforts is with stats and figures.

Marketing Man  #

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