70 Million Must-Have Craptacular Items You Don’t Need

Lists, Lists, Lists!!! I guarantee you there are more blogs posts with lists in them then there are Twitter users. I feel sorry for all those Digg regulars. They are constantly bombarded with them, and just taking a quick look at Digg’s home page I found three. I also feel sorry for all you blog readers, and unfortunately for me, I am one of them.

Using Google Alerts

Using Google Alerts I get an email for each keyword I follow once a day. I follow a lot of keywords and phrases, so I get a lot of emails from Google. My number one complaint? Seeing blog posts titled like my post: 70 Million Must-Have Craptacular Items You Don’t Need. These blog posts are just another craptacular way to do just one thing. They are to get a lot of traffic. How? Everyone loves lists! Man, oh man, who made that advice golden?

Lists Do Well, Maybe

It’s true, lists can do well, but you may be fooling yourself it you think it’s why visitors go to your site. Take a look at any popular blog post that list ten or more items. Their comments are usually filled with pingbacks and worthless comments like “Thank your for these wonderful resources.” Who do you think makes these comments? Genuine fans of your site? It’s more like “Hey Google! Here is another link to my site” comment. There  are all sorts of bots searching for top this or top 100 that. These link spammers know these lists posts often do well, and they are just trying to jump on the wagon. It’s also easy to paste a pre-made comment to fit any list type post.

Another thing to consider is that your lists may do poorly, or even worse, do you poorly. My post title here is based on another bloggers post I actually saw. Its keywords were 70 and Must-Have. It was in reference to CSS and HTML tutorial websites.

Seventy tutorial sites? Really? Are all of them must-have? Give me a break. Obviously the first tutorial site listed was so bad that it required sixty-nine more. Skimming the post I even saw reference to the same tutorial site twice. Gongggggggg. I guess they should have titled it 69 Must-Have items, or maybe come back later when I found three really really good ones.

A good blog post title can drive traffic, encourage comments, and make the headlines. It can also make you look like an idiot.

Amazingly, Many Do Not Know How To List Stuff!

This is one of my favorite issues with lists. Big time bloggers even get this one wrong. I saw the classic one about a half a year ago on Smashing Magazine*. They were actually one of the evil doers spreading the word that lists are great for your site and getting traffic. In the post (one that got hundreds of diggs, and I’m sure thousands of page views) they not only promoted using lists, but they did it in the form of a list. What’s the problem with that?

The problem with their list was that they used an ordered list instead of a bullet list. What the difference? An ordered list shows levels of importance, meaning item #1 is more important than item #10. This list clearly was not an order list, though it was formated that way. A bullet list lists items in no particular order. Call it a pet peeve if you don’t care about this kind of stuff, but for me it’s like using a made up alphabet. This is basic elementary school level stuff, and those writers should understand the difference. Big time blog site writing about lists, and they don’t know how to make one. Their author looks dumb, and so does the editor. It’s called making a list just to get traffic. Can you say short term? Sadly, they probably gained 100 more subscribers that day.

When Your Ready

When you are ready to make a list to drive tons of traffic to your site know what kind of list you are doing, do some research making sure a million people haven’t done it already, and for sure make sure your title does not make you sound like an idiot! Why not try creating a genuine list, you know, like a list that supports actual content.

*I would link to the Smashing Magazine post, but searching their site became nearly impossible to find it again. It’s too filled with lists! I commented on that post, so I should be able to find it someday.