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MITCHELL BLATT

I have posted in the past on how Blogrush can help improve your traffic. When you signup it displays your most recent post in a widget on related blogs. You can control the titles the widget uses with some Wordpress add-ons mentioned here.

The problem with Blogrush is that the click-thru rates are pretty low. That’s why you would want to control your titles to get more clicks. 0.3% is actually pretty good. They give a lot of impression credits easily, so a 0.3% CTR can actually bring about 10 visitors a day. Pretty good for free traffic.

I have been researching for the past month on what makes a good title, and here are my results:

Top Headlines
More Then A Number One Seed: Kansas And Memphis Are One Win Away… - 0.41%
Haunted Past: More Crippling Losses - 0.32%
Lets get Picky: 2008 MLB Predictions - 0.31%
Three Minute Guide to March Madness - 0.29%
Mark Cuban Was Right - 0.27%
Brett Favre is a Disgrace! - 0.21%

Interestingly enough, the post with the highest click-thru rate was too big to display on the widget. I would have expected the short ones would get more clicks. Maybe the fact that the title didn’t fit made it more intriguing?

That’s something I will continue to investigate.

The title I used for that one wasn’t even a unique title I crafted for Blogrush. The ones I did do for Blogrush were Mark Cuban Was Right, Brett Favre is a Disgrace!, Haunted Past, and Three Minute Guide to March Madness.

“Mark Cuban Was Right” and “Brett Favre is a Disgrace!” played to shock value. “Mark Cuban…” was about how people overreacted to Cuban’s blogger ban. Most bloggers would disagree, so they would click to see why.

Same with “Favre is a Disgrace.” People would disagree and see why I say he’s a disgrace (if he comes back, I said).

“Haunted Past” also gets some people to say, “What were these losses that have haunted teams?”

“Three Minute Guide” is short and sweet and plays to the biggest issue of the day: March Madness.

Based on my experiences, I would suggest trying to elicit controversy with your titles. Most of the time when I do so, I get 0.2%+ CTR. Eventually, when you find a kick-ass title, you should make that the only title you display. I will write how to do that in the next weeks.

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