Ordering of List Based Articles - Start or end with #1 in a 'top ten'?

Bobish

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How do you guys order your 'list' styled articles? For example, if you have Top 10 Destinations for X, do you start with 1 or end with 1.

On the one hand, if the reader has to scroll all the way to the bottom they will have a better chance to see more ad units (especially on mobile) but it feels like a worse user experience for them to find what they actually want. I do use tables of contents though so in theory, it wouldn't matter either way because they can skip if they'd like
 
People read lists for two reasons:
  1. They want to know the best options immediately (ascending order of #1 -> #10).
  2. They want to enjoy the build up towards the best options over time (descending order of #10 -> #1).
List Item 1 is like "Top 10 Best Ping Pong Paddles" while List Item 2 is like "Top 10 Richest Movie Stars".

If you're trying to get people to buy something, you'll want to do cater to the #1 option. If you want people to view a ton of ads or view all of the options, go with #2 and don't use table of contents or let Google skip to the last item using the fragmented URLs they're doing now.
 
Makes sense - When you put it that way it seems pretty obvious. I think I have some re-ordering to do!

I'll take a closer look into the fragmented URL issue you mentioned because I haven't considered that previously.

Thank you!
 
Ryuzaki said:
People read lists for two reasons:
  1. They want to know the best options immediately (ascending order of #1 -> #10).
  2. They want to enjoy the build up towards the best options over time (descending order of #10 -> #1).
List Item 1 is like "Top 10 Best Ping Pong Paddles" while List Item 2 is like "Top 10 Richest Movie Stars".

If you're trying to get people to buy something, you'll want to do cater to the #1 option. If you want people to view a ton of ads or view all of the options, go with #2 and don't use table of contents or let Google skip to the last item using the fragmented URLs they're doing now.
Click to expand...
Using TOC you maybe lucky for a featured position
 
Update - I made the switch for my lists that were more formatted for Ryuzaki's #2 style list and it is definitely helping. I'm in the absolute early stages of this site but my AdSense earnings almost immediately doubled for non-affiliate info pages with similar views.

Results feel fairly obvious in retrospect but I'm enjoying the learning moments no matter how simple. I have kept the TOC on the pages so far and will see how removing those might also change things. Unfortunately, no featured positions to be able to compare against quite yet but another thought for future experiments to see if it is worth the trade-off of allowing people to skip to the bottom of the ad-focused list.
 
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