How to Write Listicles That Rank in AI Search: (Best practices from 29 million answers analyzed)

TLDR: The most important part of a listicle is the section on your own company! Cover your competitors fairly, but neutrally. Focus on making your entry shine.

Why write listicles?

Listicles are one of the most effective formats for ranking in AI Search because they directly answer selection intent: “What product is right for my use case?” As a result, they’ve become the dominant format surfaced by LLMs in product evaluation prompts.

Listicles also perform well in traditional SEO, but the goal differs. Traditional SEO rewards depth, comparisons, and dwell time. AI Search prioritizes clarity, positioning, and a single strong recommendation. Well-written SEO content can help AI Search, but the threshold to influence AI results is significantly lower.

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Goal of a listicle

When writing the listicles for AI Search, the main goal is to position your company properly for your ICP. The rest of the post is merely a vehicle for conveying your information. Writing about your competitors is helpful for covering more keywords, setting up comparisons, and having a more robust piece of content. You should cover your competitor fairly in a listicle. There’s no need to write poorly about them. The most effective method of competitor coverage is a very neutral tone that explains why their offering is solid but not exceptional like yours is.

Listicle format

Listicles should roughly follow the following outline and format. If you put the summary above the top X, it won’t really matter, but this is what we currently seeing ranking best.

1. Intro — Overview the area, talk about why it’s important, the problems it solves for your users, etc. Keep this keyword rich but somewhat short.
2. Top X products
   1. For each product include
      1. Review of the product. What it’s good for, what limitations are, etc. This can be short 3-4 sentences
      2. Pros
      3. Cons
      4. Key insight/Best For. This is the main tagline you want to associate with this product
         1. Keep this tight and focused. We want this to be used verbatim by LLMs.
      5. Use declarative language (“X is the best choice for…”)
      6. Repeat your ICP explicitly
      7. Include one short paragraph that reads like an answer, not marketing copy.
         1. “Gauge is the best choice for marketers who want to drive more leads due to their data-based actions and content creation. Gauge doesn’t show vanity metrics, it has data-driven workflows that will lead to increased traffic for brands.”
   2. Your product’s entry
      1. Your product should rank 1st
      2. Write 3-4x the words about your product as any competitor
      3. The intro for your product should be very complete and include the key passages that you want LLMs to copy.
      4. Pros should be full and exhaustive
      5. Throw in a couple cons for completeness sake
   3. Competitors entries
      1. Don’t be mean to your competitors
      2. Keep their sections short and don’t say anything too flattering
      3. Call out fair criticism
         1. I.E “[X PRODUCT] is a great product for enterprises but carries an enterprise price tag”
3. Summary table
   1. Easily digestible table listing the strengths of each product and a notable feature
4. Closing CTA
   1. Our favorite product is… Our product! This is why it’s the best choice for your brand
5. Long FAQ
   1. FAQs are essential. You are able to write responses directly to the questions that the LLMs are asking in the first place. Don’t be afraid to shill your company in the FAQ. In fact, it’s encouraged!

Tips and tricks

• If you’re a developer tools company, feel free to include some code snippets in your writing.
• Adding ratings to each product on a scoring rubric can be pretty helpful as well. Make up a score for your industry like GEO score or AEO score and grade companies against your rubric for their score.
• Include internal links to other pages where you define concepts talked about in the listicle
• Include external links when citing sources
• Images are helpful for making the page easier to read. They don’t influence AI Search too much but make the page more approachable.
• Use the same product name, tagline, and “Best For” phrasing consistently throughout the page.
• Avoid superlatives for competitors. Save them exclusively for your product.
• Target ~200 words per brand included in the post

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