Smarty.Marketing

The SEO industry has always been notorious for looking for shortcuts. SEOs always discover a tactic that works and massively jump into it until it becomes a problem even for those who are trying to do it right. Listicles are just one of many examples of this happening, over and over again. We know they work for LLMs, as the list format is very easy to pull entities from; the rise of self-serving and commercial listicles has been insane to watch. Brands were forced into sponsoring their mentions in listicles, and lots of publications were switching to the “Top lists” format to monetise their existence… until Google noticed. Now poorly researched, self-serving ones are losing organic visibility. Let's talk about the flaws in these shortcuts and what to do instead!