Listicle Link Building for LLM Consensus & AI Overviews | James Dooley Interviews Jabez Reuben

James Dooley: Listicle link building for creating consensus to rank better in the LLMs and AI Overviews.

Today, I'm joined by Jabz Rubin, who is an absolute legend when it comes to building backlinks and link building strategies. Everything now seems to be focused around these listicles, which are working very, very well. Jabz, how well are listicles working for getting brands put into the LLMs?

Jabz Rubin: As of right now, they are one of the best and fastest ways to rank across LLMs.

There are multiple variations of it and multiple strategies, but to keep things very simple, listicles are working really, really well to rank across all LLMs and even in AI Overview results on Google.

James Dooley: Why do you think listicles seem to rank so well?

There are so many people now, when they are doing guest post content, press release content or anything like that, who always seem to be writing these listicles. Why do you think they do so well?

Jabz Rubin: I think they are written with such laser-focused intent because you understand query fan-out across various LLMs.

If you search for a query, LLMs search multiple variations of it. So let's say you search for the best window cleaner in New York City. LLMs will search for best window cleaners for retail, best window cleaners for commercial, and best window cleaners for condos. If you have articles very specifically written for best window cleaners for condos in a particular area, the more detailed you get, the faster LLMs pick those up. If your articles are also well structured, with proper clear details, they get picked up even faster. So I think one of the reasons listicles get picked up is because of how laser-focused and well structured they are. It is not difficult for LLMs to figure out where to pick the right answer from.

James Dooley: Yeah. So with regards to listicles, you have all the different entities being listed on the page and that comparison from one entity and one company to the next. These brands and comparisons are being put together.

You just mentioned doing a well structured listicle. Why couldn't someone just go and get a guest post and get a listicle created? You mentioned well formatted. Can you explain to the listeners what a well formatted listicle is?

Jabz Rubin: I will share how we are formatting it. There can be many variations, many other strategies and many other SOPs, but this is what we are following.

First, you structure how many competitors you want to add. You have to add your competitors. People are scared and say, "No, I do not want to add my competitors in the article." When you add your competitors in your articles, LLMs start seeing you in the same category as well. So you have to put yourself with the same competitors in your article. It can be a mix. In some articles you list five, in some you list 10, 20 and so on. So you first start by gathering your competitors for the article. Then you start with a comparison table. I am just giving you a very rough overview of what should be there. There should be a description for all competitors, and you should clearly state why your brand or your client's brand ranks well for that category. Add as much media and structure as you can. Use bullet points at the start where you summarise the article in the first five sentences. The answer to the query should be given as soon as possible. We actually give it in the very first heading because retrieval should be as fast as possible. So just try your best. I think one of the main things to focus on is making sure the answer retrieval is fast. Then add structure, bullet points, key takeaways in the first sections, and a comparison table. Then you start talking about your brand, the client's brand, and the rest of the other brands with structure, YouTube videos, media and contact details. Justify why your client tops the list. If you have awards, you can mention them. If you can talk about special USPs or services that stand out, mention all of that. Then do not sleep on FAQs. Make sure you use unique FAQs in all your articles that make sense for the buyer to make a decision. With all that structure, you position your article better. Think of it as how you would write an article for your own website when you are putting in all the effort to make it rank.

James Dooley: Yeah. I think what is incredible about what you have been doing, because I have seen a few of the different listicles you have done, is that in my opinion, you go above and beyond what a lot of others do. I think that is where it is great.

Information gain and trying to go after those extra little bits of information is key. You mentioned adding media, so images, videos, bullet points and numbered lists. Like you said, this is part of the structure you should be doing, which you probably do on your own website. Yet a lot of these people doing third-party corroborative sources or link building on guest posts are not doing that. They are just trying to cut corners and getting a single prompt with Claude or ChatGPT to create a listicle. There is no supporting data. You mentioned awards. You mentioned the USPs. You are going above and beyond to compare this brand against this brand, and this competitor against this competitor. For me, that is where you are going above and beyond with regards to listicles. I am hearing one or two people saying, "I am not certain whether listicles work anymore." Sometimes I look at some of them and think, you are just creating a top 10 list. There is no data in there to say why you are better. You need to go above and beyond to say what makes you better than them. What can I talk about? What awards have I won that I can showcase? You do not need to lie in it. All you need to do is package it up to show why you are the best and why you feel that the legislation you have and everything else that is there makes you the best. For anyone watching this who is uncertain about whether listicles help LLMs, what information would you give to them?

Jabz Rubin: Listicles are not just helping LLMs. They are also helping us rank so well on Google's page one in the organic SERPs right now.

I was actually blown away by how easy it is getting to rank on page one right now. In some cases, four out of the top five organic results are listicles we published. To keep the answer very simple and easy to understand, listicles are 100% influencing results. The more you stack up, the more you build consensus for your brand with variation. One mistake a lot of people who are complaining that listicles are not working are probably making is publishing the same content with no variation and publishing AI spam. The key is to stack up listicles with a lot of variation across every niche and every sector. For example, if you are a fintech firm and you are running accounting SaaS, you could target accounting software, best accounting software for a specific niche in a specific area, then drill down into different niches and different areas. You just have to keep stacking up with lots of variation. That is when you see these listicles really influencing results across LLMs, AIO and organic SERPs as well.

James Dooley: Do you know what you said there? One of the biggest words, and I think the biggest key takeaway from this podcast series, needs to be consensus.

We are going to be doing multiple videos. Make certain you all check out the links in the description because there will be a lot of different topics that I am going to talk about with regards to how to seed those LLMs and get your brand put in there. The word you mentioned there is consensus, and I think that is key. I see so many people come along, buy one guest post, and then say it does not work. Or they buy one press release, which might syndicate out to 350 websites, which is good, but it is the same article, which is what you have just said. Having them stacked on top of each other with different variations of the listicles is absolutely key. I also think another key point is what you mentioned about going after the best software or best companies in an area. When you change the area from Manchester to London in the UK, the list will be completely different anyway because there might be better competitors in London than there are in Manchester. You might work in both, but what it allows you to do is connect your brand and your entity with other entities. It is showing why your USPs and your awards, and what you have done, make you better than them. Can you explain a little bit further why that consensus is key? Why should people watching or listening to this not just think, "I am going to go out and get a listicle now and it is going to work"? You have to build that consensus.

Jabz Rubin: Yeah. It is something that we have to explain because it is a new thing people are getting into, including clients.

For example, when we tell clients to start from sub-regions and not target the nationwide area right away, they complain or worry and say, "But the area where I have my GMB is very small. I do not have keyword volume." Do not think of search volume right away. For building consensus, you have to understand that LLMs are aiming for what we call AGI-level intelligence. They understand how humans understand things. Think about how you and I perceive any brand. If a brand is working well in a city, then it is working well state-wide. Only then will we consider it to be a nationwide hit. We do not see any brand as a nationwide hit straight away when locally or state-wide it is not doing well. In the same way, you build your consensus for LLMs from the ground up. It is a bottom-up approach, not top-down. You have to get your foundations right. Your LLMs are smart. They are not just basic algorithms where you put the keyword in and start ranking nationwide. They will understand, "This brand was not doing well locally or regionally. How can we make them rank nationwide?" We have seen that LLMs are getting stricter for health and fintech-related niches, so YMYL, which means your money or your life niches, are even stricter. Think of the way LLMs think as how you and I, as humans, would think or perceive any brand. You have to win in every region to win across the nation, then worldwide.

James Dooley: Yeah. What I love about that is where you are merging doing this for LLMs and AI Overviews with how a lot of people talk about semantic SEO.

I think it was probably 10 years ago when Chris Carter came out with a term called SEO Avalanche. You should start off and work through your traffic tiers. Start with the easy-to-rank terms, work your way up, and keep working your way up from there. You are saying something similar. Start with the easy-to-rank suburbs, then bit by bit, keep moving it up and moving it up. I have another question for you. When you are doing these different listicles to build consensus, feed the AI Overview and feed the large language models, do you daisy chain links? Do you link one listicle to another listicle and use it as a reference?

Jabz Rubin: Absolutely. We have two products right now.

One is what we call regular listicles, where we target mid to top tier sites that allow listicles. Listicles are not easy to get published with links on every site because sites are getting stricter. Those are what we call regular listicles. Then we have a different product called brand coverage, where we do not add direct links to the client's main site. Instead, we add links to other listicles, review articles or comparison articles that we have published for the client. We add those to new publications wherever it makes sense and is relevant.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. Another key takeaway for me with regards to building consensus for listicles is that people are not realising that every article and every guest post you do on a third-party source, where you talk about one or two reviews, awards and USPs, is defining your entity.

This is strengthening the confidence and clarity of who you are, what you do, and why you are freaking awesome. That is another part of what needs to be done. Even if it did not rank in the LLMs, it is helping define who you are and what you do to ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google and Bing, which is also important. To wrap it up, Jabz, what are the key takeaways, and how can someone reach out to you with regards to building listicles to improve consensus online?

Jabz Rubin: I would say, first of all, you have to understand how search across LLMs is working. Do not chase high-volume keywords.

Start small. Even right now, we do keyword research, but we do not go crazy and say, "Let's only target higher volume." Understand that it is a long game, especially in tougher niches. Based on your budget, start as soon as possible, stack up one niche and capture that niche before you move on to another category. Then just keep stacking up. You have to keep stacking up more data and more consensus for your brand to see long-term results across LLMs. It is a long-term game. You are not going to publish one article or two articles and expect results.

James Dooley: Yeah. So for anyone listening or watching this, we hope you liked our podcast on link building and how it builds consensus for large language models and ranking in Google Search.