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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.

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 (Top) lessons from online communities
• 3 (Top) responsibilities of this SEO consultant
• 3 P’s of PPProject Management
• 3 tactics to make Web 2.0 work
• 3 Ways To Get More Than 100 Fans In StumbleUpon

3 x 4

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

• 4 M’s of digital marketing
• 4 Reasons for Social White Papers
• 4 Things Companies Should Do To Really Prepare for Social Media

8 x 5

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

• 5 (Top) Ways to Build Team Commitment
• 5 5 simple steps to improve your web content (SEO)
• 5 C’s of social media
• 5 Common Crawlability Mistakes That Kill Your SEO Success
• 5 Google Gadgets to Play With
• 5 Steps To Find Your Broad Match Key Phrases
• 5 Tips For Increasing Blog Traffic
• 5 Ways To Improve Online Cross- & Up-selling

2 x 6

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

• 6 newest interactive trends: how will they affect you?
• 6 Useful Tips To Build Relationships With Your Readers

3 x 7

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

• 7 Deadly Sins Of Social Media
• 7 Reasons Bad Website Design Affects Traffic
• 7 Tips for Tracking Offline Conversions

1 x 8

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

• 8 Simple Reputation Management Emergency Measures

2 x 9

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

• 9 Search-Related Twitter Service to Help You Find Tweets
• 9 Ways Google Is Discovering The Invisible Web

12 x 10

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

• 10 Things I Have Learned in a Year in Web Analytics
• 10 (Top) Fatal URL Design Mistakes
• 10 (Top) Link Building Strategies
• 10 (Top) reasons to start blogging - What’s all the fuss about?
• 10 Greasemonkey Scripts That Make Life Easier for Digg Users
• 10 Of The Best Alternative Social Media Sites
• 10 Questions Not To Ask A Social Media Panel
• 10 Reasons Not To Blog
• 10 Reasons Why Companies Should Engage in Social Media
• 10 Things to Check Before You Hit Send
• 10 things to remember if you want to satisfy a DMOZ editor
• 10 Timeless Persuasive Writing Techniques

1 x 12

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

• 12 Ways to Link Building that also Increase Website Traffic

1 x 13

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

• 13 FriendFeed Tools for Twitter Refugees

1 x 15

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

• 15 Tweets of Fame

2 x 20

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

• 20 Advanced Techniques to Improve Adwords Campaign Revealed
• 20 Uses for Twitter for Business and Government

1 x 22

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

• 22 Google Laws Leaked

1 x 25

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

• 22 Google Laws Leaked

1 x 104

For a total (and average…) of 1 vote:

• 104 Social Bookmarking Websites to Submit To

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

As posted in Social Media, SEO on July 4, 2008.

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24 Responses:

1. Utah SEO (125 comments.) Says:
   July 4th, 2008 at 2:57 pm

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

2. Code It Red (1 comments.) Says:
   July 4th, 2008 at 4:30 pm

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

3. Mr. Javo (1 comments.) Says:
   July 4th, 2008 at 6:45 pm

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

4. isabella mori (1 comments.) Says:
   July 4th, 2008 at 7:00 pm

   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!

5. Chelle (4 comments.) Says:
   July 5th, 2008 at 7:01 am

   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?

6. Hardware Stuff (4 comments.) Says:
   July 5th, 2008 at 9:18 am

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

7. A Tucson SEO Says:
   July 5th, 2008 at 9:39 am

   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.

8. What is Your Landing Page Doing? (1 comments.) Says:
   July 5th, 2008 at 1:06 pm

   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.

9. Meethere (5 comments.) Says:
   July 5th, 2008 at 8:21 pm

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

10. paulette (16 comments.) Says:
    July 6th, 2008 at 1:29 am

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

11. David Hobson (1 comments.) Says:
    July 6th, 2008 at 8:29 pm

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

12. Jacques SEOman (16 comments.) Says:
    July 6th, 2008 at 11:03 pm

    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.

13. Hjörtur Smárason (2 comments.) Says:
    July 7th, 2008 at 5:49 am

    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

14. Internet Marketing Joy (9 comments.) Says:
    July 7th, 2008 at 12:39 pm

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

15. Scott Hepburn (1 comments.) Says:
    July 7th, 2008 at 2:44 pm

    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!

16. Google Nemesis (1 comments.) Says:
    July 7th, 2008 at 6:44 pm

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

    Layne

17. Hye Munar (4 comments.) Says:
    July 7th, 2008 at 10:01 pm

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

18. Metaspring (54 comments.) Says:
    July 9th, 2008 at 2:17 am

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

19. Ruud Hein Says:
    July 9th, 2008 at 7:59 am

    Really pleased ya’ll like it

20. Cat (2 comments.) Says:
    July 10th, 2008 at 1:59 am

    Nice compilation Ruud, thanks for including me there

21. Msn (1 comments.) Says:
    July 10th, 2008 at 4:35 pm

    thanx for post and very useful information!

22. Eva White (33 comments.) Says:
    July 14th, 2008 at 11:24 pm

    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.

23. Petitehye (7 comments.) Says:
    July 15th, 2008 at 3:54 am

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

    THanks for this post.

24. Marketing Man (20 comments.) Says:
    July 17th, 2008 at 10:40 pm

    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.

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