Listicles as a way to get traffic and backlinks

I just had a big win on the content front this week, so I figured I would share. It's a pretty easy-to-replicate strategy so maybe it'll help some of you who are pursuing content as a marketing strategy.

I hired a freelancer to write an article for our blog called "The Best Computer Science Blogs". I knew the topic pretty well (my company writes technical blog content), so the list was relatively easy to compile. We tried to be objective though, to give it a little more credibility as listicles like this can just be cheap clickbait.

Next, we shared it individually with each blog on the list via email and Twitter. A few people Tweeted about it, and then Princeton mentioned the article in a press-release type post on their website.

The big win here is that Princeton.edu is a trusted, highly linked to site (ahrefs gives them a Domain Rank of 90), so links from them give our little site a lot more credibility.

This list and mention strategy is pretty easy to replicate for most industries. You can create a list of complementary tools, useful blogs, or relevant podcasts. By taking the time to do good research and sharing each post with the people on the list, you might be able to get your blogging efforts going quickly without spending a lot of money.