Top 5 Reasons Why I Love Top 5 Lists

Ah, the list - bloggers friend, SEO easy street.

Whether you love them or hate them, lists will remain the cornerstone of blogposts and online articles by providing the quickest and easiest way to get readers. There are many reasons why lists work, so it only seems appropriate for me to list them!

1. A quick read means more traffic for your blog

When surfing the net, most browsers don't want to end up reading ten thousand words to understand why you collect beer-mats. The internet has always been about instant gratification, quick fixes and fast reads. Your readers want to get in and get out, having been rewarded for their two minutes of attention with interesting reading.

Lists are the best way of getting a lot of information across in the quickest possible way. We all know the power of the bullet point - lists are simply an extension of that.

Of course, there are those blog posts that take this advantage and completely miss the point. 720 Common Website Mistakes might seem like an article that any self respecting webmaster would want to read, but, just like students preferring to read the Cliff Notes version rather than the entire Shakespeare play, if there is a choice between a 720 strong list and a 10 strong list, the short list wins. Every time.

2. More headings makes for better SEO

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is all about good placement of those keywords to attract strong search engine traffic. Keywords located in headings and titles carry more weight than those buried deep in the text, as it says more about the context. Therefore, lists provide further opportunities to produce extra headings, each one tailored to your SEO keywords.

3. Blog lists provoke comments and feedback

A good blog receives lots of comments. Comments produce link love and link love produces traffic. Lists almost always provoke reaction from readers, as people want to debate the choices in the list and maybe offer further suggestions of their own. The more comments you receive, the better your blog appears to other readers, snowballing until your blog hits the front page of a bookmarking site like Digg.

4. Lists automatically produce strong titles

Okay, I'm prepared for someone to show me examples that disprove this one, but I needed a fourth point and this one was the first that came to me. A strong title is just as important as a good post. If the title doesn't grab attention, a reader will not continue onto the post itself.

Titles that offer Five Reasons Why... or Ten Thing to Avoid When... allow for brief but highly descriptive headings that tell the reader what to expect in a context that makes them want to read. Good titles often revolve around 'why' and 'how', as they immediately convey that the reader will learn something by reading. Quantifying how much information is included by using a list states this point clearer still.

5. Ummm... errrr... That's It

Okay, I'm having trouble thinking of a fifth, but four doesn't sound right for a list somehow. Five is a good, strong number. Not quite sure why that is so, probably something to do with our decimal system, breaking everything down into fives and tens. I'm sure some of you reading this may have suggestions for what Number 5 should be, in which case, feel free to leave a comment. (See how number 3 works again?)

Just remember, lists are a blogger's friend, giving quick structure to blog posts whilst providing all the key ingredients for successful linkbait.