List articles are all over the internet and it’s with very good reason – simply they are highly effective and particularly well suited for the internet. Here we will look at why you should be using them on your own site, while at the same time cleverly demonstrating just how effective they can be…
1 Coming Up With Topics is Easy
If you ever waste any time staring blankly at your screen while you try to come up with a new subject idea, then list articles are for you. All you need to do to come up with a subject for a list is to think up pretty much any category or type of ‘thing’ and then think about how it can be broken down with another word. So ‘trees’ and ‘huge’. Or ‘planes’ and ‘fast’. And if you are struggling to come up with even relevant words, then you can get around this problem by simply browsing a site that deals exclusively in top tens in order to get some ideas.
2 They’re Quick and Easy to Read
People who surf the web are generally in a hurry. The web has given us the ability to get any information we need at the touch of our fingertips and this has made us somewhat spoiled as we now expect to get everything we want immediately. Actually ‘reading’ an article is no longer an option and so we will look for immediacy in everything we do. In short then your articles need to very quickly grab attention and that’s why bullet points and numbers are ideal – you can just skim across the article and take in the key points or you can read the elaboration underneath if the title piques your interest.
3 They’re Quick to Write
As well as being quick to read they are also quick to write – primarily because each point is something separate and that means you don’t need to think of much to write for each. Again this really helps with the ‘writers’ block element’ – you get stuck, you just move on to the next point.
At the same time they can also be well suited to short articles making them another quick one to churn out. Seriously these articles are incredibly versatile – if I had wanted to make this one twice as long then I’d have made it ’10 reasons’ and if I wanted to make it really short I’d have made it ’3 reasons’. You get the point.
4 They’re Compelling
When you’ve read the top eight of something then you become instantly compelled to find out what number one is, as you will have already formed opinions and made guesses and as you will have committed a certain amount of time to get to your current point. That means you can get people to stay on your page longer which is very good for your CTR.
5 They’re Good for SEO
If you’re still doing keyword research and haven’t been completely scared off by all the recent excitement, then this is a great way to make an article very SEO friendly. People are constantly searching for ‘top tens’ and that means that you can get some great traffic and especially if you think of a unique spin. Then there’s the fact that many of your titles will be ‘top ten best’ in which case you’ll also possibly rank for things like ‘best cars’. In fact if you don’t have at least one top ten article on your site yet, I would highly recommend that you do.
