The Power of SEO in Online World of Lists, Best Ofs and Top Tens

In a Bits piece in The New York Times online, Nick Bilton discusses the prevalence of lists on the web in relation to ranking products and services and the importance of a company's presence on them for exposure, brand awareness, and conversion. The lists can be found with everything from the most emailed articles with news outlets to top books sold with e-bookstores or marketplaces like Amazon. In essence, lists tell people what to seek out and buy, saving people time and effort in doing the research for themselves, or at the very least, gives them a strong suggestion. In a world of lists, companies can and should proactively strategize to get on these lists but at the same time complement such efforts with SEO, paid search, and social media campaigns to round out their overall strategy.

The lists that are at the center of this article serve, potentially more than anything else, as a filter of information. I made the point above that the lists save people time and energy, and this may be the central reason for their high rate of use and relevance. There is an incredible amount of information on the web on the whole and web-users are being exposed to increasing amounts of data and details when they go online and this can be overwhelming, especially when making purchasing decisions. As such, lists distill down options in an aggregated fashion providing users with suggestive trends most often based on the actions of their web-peers. The influence these lists have on consumers varies across the different personalities of consumes, however, it is clear that they do have a massive impact and based on the exposure of a given list drive consumer behavior.

Businesses can utilize SEO companies to boost their online presence improving their efforts to gain more exposure online in order to (a) combat not having a presence on highly visible lists in  various media, and (b) supporting their presence on such lists. Either way, companies can benefit from engaging in keyword research to understand how the products and services they sell are searched for online and how they can optimize for them increasing web traffic, exposure, and ultimately sales.

Reach out to me directly at rbuddenhagen@weimax.com for more information on the most pertinent lists for your industry and how SEO can help your business gain more exposure.