After reading Dave’s very funny 27 Reasons post, I was inspired to write my own numbers post so in an effort to kill an half an hour or so, here it is. 19 Reasons Why You Should Never Write a Numbers Post:
1. Google doesn’t know how to count. He (she?) is very good at reading for keywords, but couldn’t care less if you wrote a list of numbered paragraphs or lists. He (she) only cares about the words.
2. Bloggers care deeply about numbers posts and we all know that other bloggers don’t buy stuff from you. People searching online do. People searching online don’t give a hoot if you have one thing on your list or 9 things.
3. I know this because I’ve had posts that have promoted one thing, and other’s that promote a bunch of things in a list with titles like ‘top 5 ..’ and ‘the 7 bestselling ..’. They don’t make any difference to my sales.
4. Experts tell you that if you are writing a number post or article then it has to be odd numbered. ‘ 5 ways to ..’, ‘7 secrets ..’, ‘19 reasons why ..’, etc. They cite examples based on marketing data they’ve read. Something about physiological barriers or something. Again having numbered articles doesn’t make a difference to how you rank in the search engines.
5. I’m loving the show CougarTown right now. It’s hilarious. Ellie is my favourite character. I seriously love this show.
6. Often times some of the points in a numbers post don’t seem to have any relevance to what it is supposed to be about and are there just as filler content. See point 5.
7. Of course, we know that Google doesn’t care about numbers but human readers do. So sometimes writing an article about the ‘11 magic secrets to ruling the world’ may get you more clicks on your article.
8. While the above has worked on ezinearticles that I’ve written, it doesn’t seem to affect my CTR to my site though. Therefore, while you might get more readers looking at your article, it doesn’t always translate to clickthroughs and therefore sales on your site.
9. Once you get to point 9, you start to struggle about things to write about to keep your list going.
10. Have you seen the flirting between Alyssa Milano and The Old Spice Guy on YouTube. Very funny stuff.
11. If you are serious about making money online then you should stay away from sites like YouTube because it’s a major time sucker, and the time you spent watching video’s could have been spent writing articles and earning you money.
12. Same goes for reading other blogs from your favourite bloggers.
13. And hanging out at forums.
14. Yep, all major time suckers which could have been used to spend time writing articles.
15. Have I got to 19 yet?
16.
17. There really was something really cool at point 16, but it’s invisible and it will only appear at midnight on the 2nd of May 2067.
18. Ok, that last point wasn’t even funny. You can see I’m struggling to fill up all 19 points here.
19. Seriously though, stop reading this stupid post and go and write some articles on your blog or submit them to ezinearticles for traffic. That will make you more money that any secrets I could ever give you in this post.
Funny stuff! After reading Dave’s list, and now yours, I tried to make my own. Fortunately, I feel asleep at number seven so no one will have to suffer through my unbelievably bad attempts at humor!
@flapper costume LOL yes they can get a little tedious. But it was fun anyway. (But your list would have been funny if a the end you had little zzzzz’s at the end)
@Ronda Did you research point 10 yet? Very funny stuff.
@Dave But I just wrote my list because you told me too. Does that mean that you are the guru now? LOL
Excellent post, I think you could have easily extended that to 20 reasons although one or two of them left me feeling like I’d seen them before. Point 10 was probably the highlight for me, I think I need to research this a bit more. Thanks for sharing
Heh heh, you can see why I gave up before I got to the end of mine.
But it goes to show how much filler people write just for the sake of it. All because they feel like they have to blog regularly, because a guru told them to.
Gonna check out Cougartown.
Hmm I’ve never done a numbers post – its getting seriously tempting …
Lis, hey thanks for stopping by, good to hear from you. Tracey
Aarggh, I am hooked on Cougar Town, we have watched 12 episodes already in a few days. I am going to have to slow down or I will have seen them all by the weekend.
Great fun show that was totally unexpected, even if it is a bit “Girlie” at times
LOL – Yes, it’s a really good show. Unfortunate name, but the show itself is very funny.
3 reasons not to visit Tracey’s blog:
1) You will not be making progress on your work, which will make you money.
2) crap. she’s right. it’s hard to fill the numbered list.
3) …
LOL James .. see I told you it’s hard to do a numbered list