17 Ways to Write the Best Listicle Content on Your Blog for Higher Traffic

Everybody likes to read a list. They’re easy to read, straight to the point, and actionable. These are just some of the reasons why you should write listicles on your blog to increase your blog traffic.

If you’re planning on writing one for your blog, then take some of the tips mentioned below in mind to help you publish the best possible listicle content your blog can ever have.

Developing the headline

  1. Feature the “best” in your list– Qualifiers like “greatest,” “best,” “most excellent,” and the link will help attract more eyeballs to your post. After all, your audience will
  2. You can go the opposite road– If the “best of” list in your niche is already saturated, you can go with “worst,” “most annoying,” “grossest,” or something similar.
  3. Make your list a primary number– Studies show that the click-through rate for lists with odd and indivisible numbers are higher number compared to even numbers.
  4. Explain the benefit of the list– On the header, explain the actual advantage of the list for your audience. As an example, this post will help your audience drive more traffic to their blog if they take some of the applicable tips here in writing their listicle content.
  5. Use a blog title generator – If you’re having trouble coming up with angles and ideas for your blog post, then some of the ones featured hereshould give you a head start.
  6. Use CoSchedule Headline Analyzer– To ensure that your blog post headline is optimized, use the CoSchedule tool to test and edit it until you get the highest score possible.
  7. Make it big– The more you include in the list, the larger it becomes, the more chances people will click on it. For example, this post from Colorlib contains the most number of free WordPress themes compared to anything else on search results.
  8. Use Buzzsumo– If you are curating content relevant to your niche, then you might as well use Buzzsumo to help you identify the most trending and shared posts within a period. The tool can also reveal to you competitors that you are up against for your target keyword or niche.

Writing the content

  1. Break down the list into categories– If your list is too big, then it would be ideal if you can group the lists in your post into categories. This will make it easier for readers to browse the list and find the ones they are looking for. An example of this can be seen in a Nichehacks post I wrote about email marketing tools. Since each tool does a particular task, I grouped together the similar ones to help segregate and organize the content.
  2. Create a table of content– For bigger listicles, create a table of content that will appear on top of your post. Therefore, instead of your visitors scrolling down the page, they can simply click on the TOC so that they will be brought to that particular part of the page. For WordPress users, I recommend the TOC+ plugin.
  3. Enumerate your post– Since people came to your post for the list, you need to keep count of each. Aside from making it easier for visitors to browse your article, you deliver on the promise of the headline by showing the exact number you mentioned in the title of your content.
  4. Provide a detailed explanation of each item in your list– to provide value; you need to be thorough and exhaustive for all items. It depends on the purpose of your post, but you are normally asked to explain why you included the item in your list. Make a compelling case for their inclusion and appeal to your readers why you are correct.
  5. Add images– By piling up in your list, your readers will see nothing but a wall of text. You need to break the walls down and give readers some space to breathe by including images from free stock photo sites like Pixabay or screenshots of the item you may be featuring.
  6. Create Tweetable quotes– To increase Twitter shares of your post, you can take some of the best quotes you mentioned and create a link that allows your audience to share them on Twitter. For WordPress plugins, you can go with Click to Tweet by CoSchedule, or you can manually create your tweetable quotes by reading up here.
  7. Feature influencers in your post– Piggybacking on influencers by showcasing them in your post is a great way to increase its authority. You can grab a quote them mentioned in one of their articles that are relevant to your post, link back to their article, and create a tweetable link for it so your audience can share it on Twitter.
  8. Use Grammarly– Wordy content is prone to grammatical errors and erroneous sentence constructions. If your list is bristling with words, then you should use Grammarly to help to edit your post easier. The premium version of the tool will help you find errors that you would miss so you can improve your post even more.
  9. Craft a call to action– To end the article, you want your readers to do something for you in return after reading your value-loaded post. You can ask them to share the post on Facebook, Twitter, and others to increase its social shares or tell them to sign up to your email list to receive more awesome stuff straight to their inbox.

Conclusion

Writing listicle content is just the beginning. You will need to worry about promoting the content to the right channels and measuring its performance so you can tweak it a bit or build upon your acquired knowledge for your next listicles. Either way, the best above should lay the groundwork on how you should approach every listicle you develop, write, and publish.

If you think I missed out on including other tips in this post, please let me know by commenting below!