How To Turn Popular List Posts Into Traffic Goldmines

I‘d like to thank all of the bloggers that took the time to create the huge list posts that get’s lots of traffic and comments. You help me to do less work.

How is that? Well let’s take a look…

Ana wrote a great post on borrowing traffic from A-list bloggers and it got me thinking – are there other ways that we can use the traffic of others to our advantage? And yes there are.

At the core of SEO is keyword research. But keywords alone are nothing if we can’t convert those readers to customers. Typically this involves testing headlines or meta data or tweets over the course of weeks or months.

Frankly, I don’t have the inclination to do all that. So how to avoid it?

There are many types of blog posts, but the list post is loved by all. People love lists – they’re easy to read, they have a ton of info in a little package, and people will link to them. They also leave comments about their favorite ones.

So here’s an idea.

As a good blogger you’re commenting on those posts too. So while there, why not see which items are getting the most comments? Then, create a post devoted entirely to that item. You already know it’s popular, and more than likely people are going to want more.

All you have to do is deliver.

Let’s look at an example.

A post that Ana wrote – Link Building: What’s Naughty What’s Nice? – got 52 tweets, 33 shares, and 104 comments. That’s awesome. So how can we use that?

I notice a number of things from the comments:

• People responded very positively to the post
• They appreciate honest information
• Some of the commenters gave some really high-level advice
• Many are very against article marketing as a method of link building

That last point is the biggie for me. In the Internet Marketing world a lot of the products that “teach” you how to build links are all about article marketing – which we know doesn’t work well, or can work negatively as Ana experienced.

How You Can Benefit

From this you could write a post (using good SEO techniques, of course) purely about the dangers of article marketing. You could also tie in how many information products are out there right now claiming this to be the best way to get traffic.

It’s practically a public service announcement.

Would this upset some people? I’m pretty sure. Would it get you links and tweets and shares? I bet it would. Is there a chance that the people that read your advice would appreciate it and subscribe to your other great content? I’m sure you’d get more than a few.

And could you possibly help your credibility with the person that wrote the original post by linking to it in your post? I’m positive they would be happy about it.

The Gold In The Mountain

There are a lot of list posts out there with a lot of comments. They’re like mountains of gold just waiting to be mined.

Okay that one might be going a little far, but you get my point.

QUESTION: What do you think? Have you done this before? If so, how has it worked?

Let us know what you think in the comments. I’m looking forward to the discussion.

If you like this post and think it would be valuable to your followers, share the ish out of it for me, would you?