If your team publishes “best X” listicles, you’ve probably watched a few take off while the rest sit on page three for months. The format is the same, so the difference has to be in how the winners are built.
As a B2B SaaS writer and content strategist at Breaking B2B, I’ve written listicles on the winning side, including Softr’s knowledge management roundup, which reached about $130K a month in traffic value at its peak, and Zapier’s authenticator apps list, which reached #1.
To see what the biggest ones have in common, I studied 14 “best X” listicles from Zapier, Email Vendor Selection, Paymo, OnPay, ADP, monday.com, and others. Each is worth at least $100,000 a month in traffic value, about $3.2 million between them by Semrush’s US estimate, and I coded every page by hand, from the byline to the pricing.
The winners share a short list of features, most of them easy to copy, and they rarely bother with FAQs or scores. Below are the 14 examples, the features they share, a template, and the full dataset.
The 14 listicle examples and what they’re worth
Every figure below is an estimate of a page’s monthly US Google traffic and what that traffic would cost as ads, based on what advertisers pay per click for each search. Treat them as directional. They model traffic rather than measure it, and each one has been cleaned of inflated search terms, as the method section explains.
| # | Listicle | Publisher | Visits a month | Traffic value a month | Value per visit |
| 1 | Best SEO tools | Zapier | 82,000 | $725K | $8.84 |
| 2 | Best email marketing platforms | Email Vendor Selection | 14,000 | $449K | $32.03 |
| 3 | Project management software | Paymo (vendor) | 17,600 | $288K | $16.34 |
| 4 | Best small business payroll software | OnPay (vendor) | 3,600 | $242K | $68.00 |
| 5 | Best SEO tools | MarketerMilk | 29,900 | $217K | $7.26 |
| 6 | Best payroll software for small businesses | ADP (vendor) | 4,500 | $177K | $39.63 |
| 7 | Best online course platforms | Email Vendor Selection | 18,800 | $168K | $8.89 |
| 8 | Best social media management tools | Zapier | 17,100 | $153K | $8.95 |
| 9 | Best employee scheduling software | People Managing People | 9,000 | $152K | $16.95 |
| 10 | CRM software | monday.com (vendor) | 9,600 | $146K | $15.17 |
| 11 | Best keyword research tools | Zapier | 24,100 | $121K | $5.04 |
| 12 | Best AI workflow automation tools | Gumloop (vendor) | 6,700 | $120K | $17.87 |
| 13 | Bookkeeping software | Pilot (vendor) | 5,500 | $106K | $19.22 |
| 14 | Best AI apps | Gumloop (vendor) | 28,500 | $105K | $3.67 |
Seven of the 14 are written by software vendors about their own category. The other seven come from Zapier, MarketerMilk, Email Vendor Selection, and People Managing People, which review categories they don’t sell in. All the data, including the features coded for each page, is in the public listicle study sheet.
How the study was done
I started with the US Google top 10 for 16 “best [software]” searches, including CRM, project management, payroll, help desk, accounting, website builders, time tracking, social media tools, ecommerce, ERP, applicant tracking, AI writing, invoicing, webinars, LMS, and HR software. I added sites I already knew for strong listicles and left out big media sites like Forbes, PCMag, and G2, since a SaaS team can’t copy their domain strength.
For every candidate page, I pulled its keywords from Semrush’s US database and removed search terms whose 12-month trend spikes for a month or two and sits near zero the rest of the year. Those spikes inflate a term’s average volume, and with it the traffic estimate of every page that ranks for it. I kept the pages still worth at least $100,000 a month after cleaning, then opened each live page and recorded 16 features by hand.
The usual limits apply. These are estimates, not measured traffic, and pages change. The coding reflects each page as it stood in October 2026.
What the highest-value listicles have in common
Each of the patterns below shows up on most of the 14 pages. Under each one is the count, what the best examples do, and what to copy.
A named author, often with credentials (12 of 14)
Twelve pages carry a person’s name on the byline, and several add a line about why that person can judge the category. People Managing People puts its employee scheduling list under Kim Behnke, with “9 years in HR + certified Digital HR Specialist” right under her name. MarketerMilk’s Omid Ghiam opens his SEO tools list by saying he led SEO at Webflow, and the same author writes both of Gumloop’s lists in the study.
The two exceptions are ADP and OnPay, which publish under the company name. Both are payroll companies with decades in the category, and OnPay states that experience in its intro.
What to copy. Put a real person on the byline and add one line about their experience with the category. A reader comparing tools wants to know the author has used them or worked in the field.
A visible 2026 update date (13 of 14)
Thirteen pages show a 2026 date near the title, usually labeled “Last updated”. ADP’s payroll list shows September 17, 2026, and People Managing People’s shows October 19, 2026, two days before I checked it. The one exception is Pilot’s bookkeeping list, dated April 2025.
What to copy. Show the date the page was last checked, and recheck it whenever prices or features change. Buyers compare prices, and a 2024 date makes every price on the page look suspect.
The picks and prices before the long reviews (10 of 14)
Ten pages give the reader their shortlist on the first screen, before any long reviews. Email Vendor Selection lists each course platform with a one-line verdict and its starting price, and monday.com opens its CRM list with a table of all 14 tools, their use case, free trial, and price.
ADP goes further. Right under its intro, a heading asks “What is the best payroll software for small businesses?” and two sentences answer it. That’s the answer a buyer, a featured snippet, and an AI summary all look for first.
What to copy. Put a quick picks list or table near the top with each tool’s best-for label and starting price. A reader who leaves after the first screen should still leave with a shortlist.
A comparison table (10 of 14)
Ten pages compare the tools side by side in a table. Zapier’s lists open with a “best X at a glance” table, and its keyword research list compares each tool’s best use, standout feature, and free plan.
monday.com and Paymo use the table for pricing, with a price per user for every tool. That’s the comparison a finance lead or a founder makes first.
What to copy. Pick the three or four columns your reader decides on, usually best for, starting price, and one standout feature, and keep the table to one screen.
A stated selection method (8 of 14)
Eight pages explain how the tools were picked, usually before the first pick. Zapier’s keyword research list says the author considered more than 90 tools, and every Zapier list carries the same “How we evaluate and test apps” box, including a line that the company is never paid for placement.
Gumloop’s best AI apps list says the author used more than 70 tools and names eight criteria. People Managing People splits its method into the basics every tool on the list must have and the factors that set them apart.
What to copy. Before the first pick, say how many tools you looked at, how you tested them, and what you judged them on. Two or three sentences are enough if they’re specific.
“Best for” labels instead of a single winner (11 of 14)
Eleven pages match each tool to a use case or buyer rather than ranking everything against one standard. Zapier builds every heading this way (“Best SEO tool for enterprises”, “Best SEO tool for beginners”), and Email Vendor Selection puts a best-for line in its tool headings.
The labels help readers in a hurry, since they can find the tool for their situation without reading every review. They also match how buyers search, which is often by use case: “best CRM for small business”, “best payroll for contractors”.
What to copy. Give every pick a best-for label, and make each label different. If two tools are “best for small teams”, one of the labels isn’t doing its job.
Pricing for every entry (13 of 14)
Pricing is the most common feature in the study. Email Vendor Selection gives each course platform a “What does it cost?” section and lists discounts, and Paymo puts a price per user in its table and in every review. Pilot’s bookkeeping list is the only page without prices.
What to copy. List a starting price for every tool, say whether it’s billed monthly or annually, and note free plans or trials. Date the prices once, near the top.
Pros and cons (9 of 14)
Nine pages list strengths and drawbacks for each tool, and the vendors that do it apply them to their own product too. ADP lists cons for its own RUN payroll alongside every competitor’s, and Paymo gives itself three cons, including that its dashboard looks outdated.
What to copy. Give every tool real cons, including yours if you’re a vendor. A list where every tool has only strengths reads like a set of ads.
Long pages with lots of real screenshots
The median page in the study runs about 6,000 words and carries about 26 images. The range is wide, from ADP’s 2,700 words to Paymo’s 17,700, and from 10 images on Zapier’s keyword research list to 234 on Paymo’s.
Length follows the number of tools. Zapier’s keyword research list covers five tools in about 3,200 words and earns about $121K a month, while MarketerMilk’s SEO tools list covers 25 in about 11,400. Neither won by being long. Both cover each tool in enough depth to choose from.
What to copy. Show every tool with a real screenshot of the product, not a logo, and write enough per tool for a reader to decide. Let the number of tools set the length.
What most high-value listicles skip
Three features show up far less often than you might expect.
- FAQ sections: 2 of 14. Only Email Vendor Selection’s email marketing list and People Managing People’s scheduling list end with an FAQ.
- Scores or ratings: 2 of 14. Paymo scores every tool out of 100, and MarketerMilk rates ease of use. The rest don’t score at all.
- How-to-choose sections: 6 of 14. ADP, monday.com, Zapier’s social media list, Email Vendor Selection, People Managing People, and Pilot include one.
None of these hurts a listicle, and a how-to-choose section helps on expensive categories where buyers want help deciding. But they aren’t what the high-value pages have in common. The author, the top of the page, the labels, the pricing, and the screenshots are.
How vendors list their own product
Seven of the 14 listicles are written by a vendor about its own category. The other seven come from sites with no product to rank, which is part of why readers trust them.
Five of the seven vendor pages put their own product first: Paymo, OnPay, ADP, monday.com, and Gumloop’s workflow automation list. Gumloop’s best AI apps list puts Gumloop second, behind Google Labs. Pilot sells a bookkeeping service rather than software, so its list makes QuickBooks its top choice.
Only one of the seven explains why it’s on its own list. OnPay has a section titled “Why we earned a spot on this list”, which points to its 30 years in payroll and the recognition it has received.
Whether vendors should rank themselves first is a live debate. In February 2026, Lily Ray reported that several SaaS blogs full of self-promotional “best of” lists had lost visibility, in “Is Google Finally Cracking Down on Self-Promotional Listicles?”. Grow and Convert disagreed in their response, showing those listicles were a small share of each affected blog and arguing that bad content, not self-inclusion, explained the drops. In AI search, Peec’s study of 232,000 citations in software reviews found that about 11% come from self-promotional listicles, with ChatGPT citing them far less often (3.6%) than Google’s AI Mode or Perplexity (about 10%).
The study pages show self-inclusion can coexist with high value. Five vendors rank themselves first and still earn $120K to $288K a month. They also do the rest of the job: a method, real cons for their own product, pricing for everyone, and use-case labels.
What to copy. If you list your own product, say why, give it the same pros and cons as everyone else, and label it for the buyer it suits rather than calling it best for everyone.
Why some listicles are worth more per visit
Value per visit in the study ranges from $3.67 to $68. The category decides most of it, because traffic value follows what advertisers pay per click.
- Payroll and finance: OnPay earns about $68 a visit, ADP about $40, and Pilot about $19.
- Email marketing: Email Vendor Selection’s list earns about $32 a visit.
- Project management, scheduling, CRM, and workflow automation: $15 to $18 a visit (Paymo, People Managing People, monday.com, Gumloop’s workflow list).
- SEO tools and AI apps: $4 to $9 a visit (Zapier, MarketerMilk, Gumloop’s AI apps list).
That’s why OnPay’s list, with about 3,600 visits a month, is worth more than Gumloop’s best AI apps list with almost eight times the traffic.
What to copy. When you choose which listicles to write first, look at what clicks are worth in the category as well as search volume. A few thousand visits from buyers in an expensive category can be worth more than tens of thousands from a cheap one.
Check a listicle’s numbers before you copy it
Before cleaning, the 14 pages looked like they were worth about $5.8 million a month. Spiked search terms accounted for about 45% of that.
Zapier’s best SEO tools list fell from $1.69 million to $725K, because more than half of its estimated traffic came from “seo tools”, a term whose volume spikes for a few months and sits near zero the rest of the year. Email Vendor Selection’s course platforms list fell by 82%. Zapier’s screen recording list dropped from $124K to $22K and out of the study.
Nothing is wrong with the pages themselves. The estimates are inflated, and the same inflation affects any competitor page you might be studying, or your own page in a report to leadership. To check a page in Semrush:
- Open the page in Organic Research and sort its keywords by traffic.
- Look at the 12-month trend for the top few terms.
- Discount any term that spikes for a month or two and sits near zero the rest of the year.
- Recalculate the page’s traffic and traffic value without those terms.
A listicle template built from the study
The template below follows the sections the high-value listicles use, in the order they use them.
- Title with the year. “The 10 best X software in 2026.”
- Byline with credentials. A named person and one line on why they can judge the category.
- “Updated” date. Near the title, changed only when you recheck the page.
- A two-sentence answer. The top pick, or which tool suits which buyer.
- Quick picks table. Tool, best for, and starting price.
- How we chose. The number of tools you considered and what you judged them on.
- One entry per tool. A best-for label, what it is, a real screenshot, pricing, pros and cons, and who should skip it.
- Tools that didn’t make the list. One line each, so readers see the field was wider. Zapier’s SEO tools list does this.
- How to choose. The questions that decide between your picks.
- A disclosure. Affiliate links, or why your own product is on the list.
What listicles have done for Breaking B2B clients and for me
At Breaking B2B, where I’m a content strategist, one published client result came from listicles. For MarqVision, a brand protection software company, the team built listicles designed to be cited in AI answers alongside SEO fixes and refreshes. Within six weeks, MarqVision was cited in ChatGPT and Gemini answers to category questions, and UK demo requests rose, with the blog content as the clear source.
My own listicles show the range of what one good list can do:
- Softr’s knowledge management software roundup reached about $130K a month in traffic value at its peak. I wrote about how that roundup was built and what happened after.
- Zapier’s best authenticator apps list reached #1 for its target search and saves Zapier more than $20,000 a year in ad spend for the same visitors.
- One listing in my SaaS SEO agencies roundup led to a $36K ARR deal for the agency, 10 days after I added it. The details are in the case study on that deal.
None of these needed thousands of visits to be worth it. The Softr roundup did it with a few thousand visits in an expensive category, and the $36K deal came in a 10-day window when the roundup got 20 clicks from Google.
Planning a “best X” listicle and want it built like the ones in this study? Book a call with me.
