The number you use in your list-based content title may seem like an insignificant thing, but it is thought that these numbers can have an unconscious appeal to your users. They can also have a distinct lack of appeal, which is what most site owners worry about.

The question over numbers for lists came about because of the popularity of the list form itself. Anywhere you go on the net, you are guaranteed to come across a list. They are just as popular with big sites as they are with little ones, and it doesn’t look like this form of content is going to lose its appeal. The fact that you can often find lists on search engine optimisation specialist sites is a testament to how much internet pros believe in the popularity of the list. The popularity of the number on the list, however, is entirely up for debate.

Top ten lists used to be one of the most popular forms of content for online writing. They are still quite popular, but their position has frequently been questioned, mostly by Bloggers. After so many years of ‘top 10′ lists, bloggers and site owners began to worry that the novelty quality of the list format had begun to wear off. People these days are using top seven, top five and even top 12 lists and getting quite a good response.

A number of studies have been conducted on ‘top [number]‘ lists, with varying results. Although the results aren’t definitive, they do reveal certain trends.

For a start, all of the studies show that any number smaller than five makes a bad list. This comes as no surprise to most writers, and those numbers tend to be avoided anyway. Also no surprise is the fact that five and ten make for some of the most successful lists, ten by far in the lead. What is of interest is that some very odd numbers come up as some of the most successful. On some sites, ‘top 7′ lists are significantly more popular than ‘top 10′. On Digg, for example, bloggers have found that ‘top 7′ and ‘top 12′ lists outperform ‘top 10′ lists by between 10% and 20%. These results are time-sensitive, of course, and samples taken at different times and different years vary.

Another surprising thing is how successful big numbers are. On the net, you don’t have much space to list items in. This makes using a ‘top 20′ list feel like a bad move. Surprisingly, a ‘top 20′ list can be hugely successful in some forums, catching around as much attention as the ever-popular ‘top 5′ list. Even bigger numbers perform almost as well, with ‘top 100′ lists catching a surprisingly large audience.

These results show that intuition isn’t always to be trusted on the net. Research is important for any content, and you can talk to us at SEO Consult about the right research for your site. There is no explanation for the attraction of some numbers over others, but hopefully in time some curious blogger will solve this conundrum as well.

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