With the number of search engines out there nowadays, you would think people would have no interests in posts that are nothing but a lot of links. For whatever reason though, they do well, and they can become “viral”.
Lists are a simple concept: Just come up with a theme, and then go and gather as many links as you can related to that theme. Give it a title such as “21 Ways To Bake Bread” or “Top 21 Ways To Bake Bread”, something that sounds authoritative, and you will probably end up with a winner. These are great types of posts to get yourself on sites such as Digg and the social bookmarking sites.
Now, there is one step you do need to do beyond just putting in links, and that’s to add a short description for each entry. What makes that site stand out from the rest of the list? Do they have a feature the others don’t? Do they charge for their service where others don’t? The list has to also be useful to the users, always keep that in mind.
Personally, I think it stems from people don’t want to do the leg work themselves. Sure, they could go out and hit Google, but why should they when you’ve already done all the leg work for them? It can take some time, but the potential extra traffic makes it all worthwhile, I feel.
