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3-2-1: How to write great roundup listicles, scoring a content opportunity, and building your keyword universe

Welcome to today’s issue of Efikó, a weekly newsletter by me, Dozie Anyaegbunam, focusing on content marketing, writing, social strategy, and living your best life. THANK YOU for being here! I appreciate you!

Hey content superstars,

My late is late today. Sincere apologies. I am supposed to be on PTO today. But my workaholism won’t allow me to be great. My boss already gave me marching orders on the company Slack.

Well, I’m here! How has your week been?

I plan to record the test run for my podcast next week. What do you think of the cover art? 👇🏾

3 Things I learned This Week

i.

I am currently working on building a comparison hub. And the project's first stage started a couple of months ago - creating roundup lists that talk about tools for a particular problem content> I’m sure you know all those posts - “20+ tools for X.”

Well, here’s what I learned looking at the performance of those we’ve published:

  • The sweet number seems to be between 9 and 13. Anything more than that becomes overwhelming for your audience. They don’t click through. And you don’t rank.

  • Using bolded bullet points to highlight specific items such as who should use the tool and what users say (you can get this from review sites such as G2 or Capterra) does wonders.

  • Images are great. But don’t let that stop you from publishing. You can always add them later.

I’ll be testing out adding video reviews at the top of the piece later this month. I’ll keep you posted on how that helps the page traffic and CTR.

P.S.: Yes, some blogs publish 50 tools. And rank. But these are often blogs with high domain authority. So, there are probably a lot more than you see contributing to them owning those spots. If you are working on an early-stage website like me, ditch all those 50 tool roundups. I am going to update all the pieces with over 15 tools soon.

ii.

I have been big on building rubrics to score content creation opportunities. Here’s an updated version of what I’ll use to score topics for Q3.

  • What’s the keyword volume?

  • What’s the keyword difficulty?

  • How many clicks per search does it get?

  • What’s the composition of the SERP results?

  • Does the search intent fit into my buyer’s journey?

  • What’s the stage of my site (D.R. and backlink profile)

I’ll be scoring this from 1 to 5. With 5 being the highest score and 1 the lowest.

iii.

Adding one more tip to last week’s lessons on picking keywords for your keyword universe:

  • Avoid keywords without related questions, or people also ask snippets. This is usually a sign that people aren’t searching for that keyword.

2 Things I am Thinking About

i.

“When you let go of competing with others, it frees you to be the best version of yourself.”

Shane Parrish

ii.

Between stimulus and response, there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.”

Victor E. Frankl

1 Book Recommendation

The Startup of You by Reid Hoffman is a practical read for those looking to take some form of control of their career. Because I think we can’t control everything no matter how much the motivational speakers would like us to believe.

Content Writing Jobs - June

All the best, folks. Could you please share with any of your friends/colleagues who might find this helpful?

If you would love me to review your writing and give you feedback, you can book a time here. Or just hit the reply button.

Thanks for reading this far. I am grateful!

Be good out there. If you can't be good, be careful

I’ll be back on 6/24.

Dozie

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