You should add a number to at least half of your blog posts according to a successful small business marketing blogger. What he really means is that list formatted posts, such as 4 Best Ways to Make Money Blogging, 10 Incredible Gmail Tricks and Tips or 4 Best Ways to Make Money Blogging… are extremely effective in driving social sharing which also leads to linking which is great for search ranking.

“Over the past three years, I’ve crafted titles for over 5,000 blog posts and have received over 58 million unique visitors to date,” said Brandon Gaille in a guest post on Google’s Inside AdSense blog. “With that many titles and that much traffic, it’s allowed me to identify what types of titles get the most traffic.”

Gaille has been on a tear over the past 3 years, founding business advice site BrandonGaille.com which now has over 2 million monthly visitors. Galille has since parlayed that success into offering a course called The Blog Millionaire for others to learn how to make millions too. “The overwhelming success of his blog system led Brandon to create an online course to guide bloggers and businesses down the same proven path of success that his clients pay him up to $100,000/year for,” said Galille on LinkedIn. There is currently a waiting list to join the course!

5 Reasons Adding a Number to Your Article Titles Increase Traffic

1. Placing a Number Gives Users What They Are Used To!

Call it the BuzzFeed effect, but lists drive traffic and a number in the title signifies a list. It’s really that simple.

“Titles that begin with numbers are proving to drive traffic,” says Gaille. “This is largely due to the increased consumption of users reading list posts more than any other type of blog post. A list post typically has anywhere from seven to forty key points, which are listed out numerically.”

2. List Posts Are Shared the Most on Social

People love to share List Posts on social media like Facebook and sharing can supercharge your traffic. Why not play into the social media game and give them what they want, short, easy to digest sharable content.

3. Odd Numbers in Titles Are 20% More Effective

“Although no one has figured out exactly why this happens, the odd numbered titles get more clicks than the even numbered titles,” said Gaille.

I think it’s probably because it sounds more legit, not made up. For instance, if somebody posts the 10 best ways to drive traffic, people will inherently think that the writer thought of 10 points and stopped thinking. However, if it was the 7 best, it sounds as if these are actually what the author thinks are truly best.

4. People Love to Link to Lists Which Makes for Great SEO

Search engine optimization is driven by links and what better way to get links than to get your content shared on social. So part of your SEO strategy should be to write content that people want to link to and then not only will they link in their own blogs but they will also get the word out by sharing your posts on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook and many other places.

5. Gaining a List Site Reputation Will Cause Repeat Traffic

Just like Brandon Gaille has discovered, writing lots of list style posts and including a number in the title gives you traction as a place people want to go. People like simple straight forward easy to read advice and that’s what Gaille delivers. Those who are looking for something to share on social or for inspiration on an article (like this one) find list sites a great destination source.