Web roundups and inspiration lists

[BigBigFan]

This subject has really been burning at me lately because it seems to be a favorite in Google.

Web roundups: The process of writing an article to tell your visitors about other articles currently on the net, usually involving your opinion of these.

Inspiration lists: A mashup list of things that inspire usually consisting of images from other websites. The images are not hotlinked and credit is provided, much like Google does with images.

Lists tend to do well in social circles, they are easy to write and promote and when you employ a scatter gun approach to content you usually end up with at least one or two images that impress a visitor. Google likes lists and likes giving high rankings to image lists in particular ESPECIALLY if the list is on a social site like blogger. (don't believe me? Go to Google images and look up Ferrari Wallpapers - see enough Blogger and wordpress.com blogs in the top 50?)

Should we all be creating web roundups and lists? Are you?

 

[Tara]

This subject has really been burning at me lately because it seems to be a favorite in Google.

Web roundups: The process of writing an article to tell your visitors about other articles currently on the net, usually involving your opinion of these.

I haven't heard the term web roundups before. When I read your description, I thought about content creation which is really hot at the moment. I'm do use a little of this on my blog. I have been thinking of using a lot more content creation or web roundups on my blog.

Inspiration lists: A mashup list of things that inspire usually consisting of images from other websites. The images are not hotlinked and credit is provided, much like Google does with images.

Lists tend to do well in social circles, they are easy to write and promote and when you employ a scatter gun approach to content you usually end up with at least one or two images that impress a visitor. Google likes lists and likes giving high rankings to image lists in particular ESPECIALLY if the list is on a social site like blogger. (don't believe me? Go to Google images and look up Ferrari Wallpapers - see enough Blogger and wordpress.com blogs in the top 50?)

Should we all be creating web roundups and lists? Are you?

I didn't realize how popular the inspiration lists are. My friends post them on Facebook and I personally like them. Thanks for this post, because now my brain is churning with new ideas.

 

[BigBigFan]

Another benefit of web roundups is that you link to a few different sources from one page and the webmasters of those sites will then see your site in their reports and may come visit, follow you or perhaps even include your site in future articles of theirs. The more actual traffic you send other sites the more powerful this becomes.

Your nightly news is nothing more than a roundup nowadays, it's all stories gathered from other sources. 30 years ago the news was mostly stories that the news channel went out and vetted themselves, but not anymore.

I noticed a few sites on buysellads.com getting over 1M visitors a month and when you look at the site you see nothing but lists and roundups. Heck, if you have a wordpress template there is no chance you'll rank top 10 in Google for it because those are all taken by mashups/roundups too.

 

[R.E. Danielson]

I could see how web round ups would be very beneficial for SEO in the sense of earning more traffic from other bloggers, but how can you beat out the big guys who already use this on their websites? I think it might be most beneficial for those who have ongoing contact with their readers, as opposed to a content website that is used for passive income.

 

[tmgenterprises]

Web roundups are just another term for content curation and yes, content creation is hot right now. The key factor in this technique is to show your readers your expertise by providing them with only the best content you've found. This only works well if you provide your own commentary and opinions on the content you share with them, though.

 

[ViperDove]

I like the web roundup and creating of lists. Matt Cutt have always talked about using list items as a link bait. But going about to do all these is not that easy. One should just focus on one before moving to others.