photo credit: bitmask

I’m looking at what feeds to keep or delete in Google Reader and I discovered something.

I can pretty much tell what a site is about if I look at it in list view, which just lists the headlines in a feed. That’s helping me categorize un-categorized feeds. Which blog I’m writing in determines what I’ll prioritize reading that day, so being able to tell at a glance what a blog’s “voice” or “message” is strikes me as important.

You know how I think — would my blog pass that test?

And sadly, (though not surprisingly, given that I’ve been quiet in anticipation of my “retirement” next month), even if I take out our special Friday editions, I can only give a qualified yes to answer that question.

IF the person subscribing already knows a bit about traffic, they can tell my posts are on that topic from the headlines. If not, you can’t really tell.

Granted, I like to get creative with my titles. But headlines are everything. Am I losing the core audience this site was built for by leaning too much towards witticisms?

Could you gain more visitors by tweaking your titles?

Try this exercise on your own site and tell me what you found out.

I JUST turned the page back on for more Traffic Reality memberships, with immediate access to the site and the last two newsletters. And some people must have those notifiers turned on that tell them when a page has changed, because the first 12 are already gone! I was preparing to announce it in the newsletter in a few hours, but okay – go get ‘em if you want ‘em!

(And if, by chance you really don’t know what I’m babbling about, you can click the link. )