Written on April 27th, 2008 at 03:04 pm by Darren Rowse
Should I Have a BlogRoll on my Blog
@SalesBlogcast asks - “What’s the difference between haveing “links” vs. a “blog roll?” Benefits? Chosing wisely?”
Ultimately the word ‘blogroll’ is just a different term used to describe a list of links, usually on the sidebar of a blog. It’s just a different label for the list of links I guess.
When I first started blogging everyone had a blogroll but these days I don’t see as many. One of the problems with them when your blog grows is that they can become quite political to maintain. I ended up giving up on having one on ProBlogger as I had so many requests to be on it - now I just have one with my b5media co-workers.
The other thing about blogrolls is that I hear people trying to get on them because of the SEO benefits of doing so. I’m sure there is some Google juice passed from blog rolls but suspect it’s not massive. Google seem to have more of an emphasis on links in content rather than links that appear on every page on sidebars/footers from what I can see these days.
I’d be interested to hear whether others have blogrolls, why they do (if they do) and how they decide who is on and who isn’t?
63 Responses to “Should I Have a BlogRoll on my Blog”
Anthony Mendoza
April 27th, 2008 4:43 pm
I have a blogroll on my blog to show my readers the blogs in my niche that I enjoy reading and that I think are worth while. I also put blogs on my blogroll that I occasionally write for or am associated with.
Steve J
April 27th, 2008 4:54 pm
I suppose it depends on what you want your “blogroll” to be. Do you want it to be a reward of traffic to those who helped you out (or you have some relationship with) or do you want it to be a useful list of resources for your readers? I think this will generally be dictated by the style of blog and whether is informational or more personal.
Personally, I don’t have one as I feel that they are more trouble than they are worth with requests to be on them and complaints when a link is dropped. :)
mahdi yusuf
April 27th, 2008 4:59 pm
yes, and i should be on it for your tech source!
DB Ferguson
April 27th, 2008 5:09 pm
I definitely think that for my blog, a blogroll is a positive contribution to my site and to the fandom of which I report. As my blog is considered by most to be at the top of my niche, I am very careful about who I put in my blogroll. I don’t put sites which basically look like they’re more ad driven than subject driven. I also only add sites which look like they are adding substance and a different perspective on the fandom. I pretty much insist that a site be established before I add it. I also make sure that I use my blogroll as a tool to help develop relationships with the webmasters who blog in my niche.
However, I totally agree with you that maintaining a blogroll does become extremely political at times. There have been fan sites in my niche that have literally demanded to be put on my blogroll, and whose readership badmouthed me on their forums when I did not. I’m glad I held to my principles, however, as the sites eventually went sour and I was thankful I was not affiliated with them.
I appreciate when bloggers have blogrolls and I’m included, especially high-status sites, because I think that if a blog is considered an authority in the field, that having a blogroll link is considered to be a very high compliment. For example, my blog is listed in the Comedy Central Insider blogroll, as well as the blogroll of a former writer of the show I report on. I’d like to think that many of the fans of my site feel as good about being listed on my site as I do being listed on the CC Insider blog.
Make Money Online
April 27th, 2008 5:10 pm
Great topic Darren! This is something that’s been buzzing on the net for a while now, I constantly see blogs removing their “blog-roll” as most think it comes off as “unprofessional.” I’ll get to that in a second but first I must say I agree with Steve J, it really all depends on what links you have listed there and their reason for being there. Are they there for SEO reasons? Or are they there as a useful resource for the readers of your blog? So as far as it being “unprofessional” all depends on that. If you have links there for simply SEO reasons I feel this is “unprofessional” as it’s not useful for your readers which is what all content on your site should be, and there are other more effective ways of SEO to get a high PR so there is no need to do SEO via “blog-roll.” Just my opinion, once again great post Darren, this is a hot topic on the web right now.
Jaffer
April 27th, 2008 5:11 pm
I don’t have a list of blogs in my sidebar but
I use the Simple RSS Fetcher plugin for Wordpress, to fetch latest headlines from my top 5 favourite blogs.
jen at semantically driven
April 27th, 2008 5:22 pm
I have a blogroll on its own page and it’s derived from my favourite ‘daily’ reads via Google Reader. I don’t think that page is viewed a lot but it is occasionally.
Si Philp
April 27th, 2008 5:53 pm
I have a blogroll on my site and I have to agree that maintaining it can be a pain. At one point I had over 15 links. Problem I found was that some of the blogs i linked to were slowly going down hill in relation to the content that was on them or lack of updates. If I find a good resouce I like to share/give credit.
I now just have friends on there but review it fortnightly :)
The Masked Millionaire
April 27th, 2008 6:00 pm
No Blogroll here. Most of the people that read my blog know that I refer to certain sites all of the time. I give credit and a link (in content) when discussing what was on another site.
I hardly ever click on blogrolls. So it makes me think that other people don’t click on them either.
Live From Las Vegas
The Masked Millionaire
Eli
April 27th, 2008 6:11 pm
For my blogroll I mostly have link exchanges. But I was worried about if Google would see it as text links, as the links aren’t no follow.
Wendy Blackheart
April 27th, 2008 6:16 pm
I’m very pro-blogrolls. I get a fair amount of traffic via other people’s blogrolls, and I’ve heard the same from friend. I include links to relevant blogs I personally enjoy, and to organizations I have experience with.
I’ve found some of my favourite blogs via the blogrolls of blogs I enjoy.
Hadassah
April 27th, 2008 6:31 pm
I have a short blogroll, which works well since I have a small niche. When I see a really long blogroll on another blog, I don’t usually bother to check any of those blogs out.
Lightening
April 27th, 2008 6:37 pm
I actually find keeping my reasonably up to date a bit of a headache as my “regular reads” are quite changable over time. However, my blogroll page is one of the most read pages on my site so it’s obviously something my readers are interested in (what other blogs I read). Either that or they’re just checking to see if I’ve gotten around to adding them yet???? I don’t update it very often. :(
Rasmus
April 27th, 2008 6:50 pm
As I see it, blogrolls are really about two things: Respect & Support
Respect: You put blogs that you enjoy on your blogroll to show your respect and/or admiration. This is useful especially if it is a blog that your readers might also enjoy, because it then helps get you goodwill from both readers and possibly the owner of the blog you like.
Support: Friends’ blogs you just want to promote or recommend. This might be better suited for personal style blogs, unless your friends are writing about the same things as you.
I don’t update mine very often, but I do keep a blogroll on all my self-hosted blogs for the reasons given above.
Jarkko
April 27th, 2008 7:36 pm
My wife and I decided not to use blogroll or a list of links like Darren puts it. We decided that we will always add links when and where we see fit and shy away from making it too calculating an effort. This way people have very simple way to land that link on our new site, write something that we notice and like and the link will be yours.
Looks like more benefits come from actual cooperation than from mere linking. Therefore we are going to focus on working instead of linking. Creating article series with visiting writers seems like a good idea to us.
Learning from others is smart move. Personally I like the way Darren places featured articles as “Best of Problogger” list. In my opinion this approach will work much better than presenting a list of links, which direct visitor to elsewhere.
Highlighting articles, which have evergreen glow on them, gives better on-site experience to the occasional visitor, hence one’s site has good first impression. Now, if these articles also introduce other sources, they have a valid reason to be there. This joins power of personal recommendation and content association. Isn’t that what you actually want to give your partners, instead of a link?
Syed Balkhi
April 27th, 2008 7:51 pm
I have blogroll in my site my also which links to some of my co-worker’s sites. I have given up about giving out free links as well because It just gets annoying with the requests.
Igor The Troll
April 27th, 2008 8:03 pm
Darren, I think you have to start an independent blog just to give your commentators links. ;-)
david cheong
April 27th, 2008 8:51 pm
Some of the web actually didn’t include or have it on their blog, many case it could be some personal issue.
To be honest, not many of my blog have it. Might be thinking of having one soon. Nice post given.
Kelvin Kao
April 27th, 2008 8:52 pm
I have a blogroll on my site, mostly because it was a built-in feature. My blog doesn’t have that big of an audience anyway, so I just use it as a friendly gesture to sites I like. Since I am not big, there’s not really politics involved. What if I somehow become a big-time blogger? Then I would be a lot more careful with my blogroll policy, I guess.
Michael
April 27th, 2008 9:20 pm
I’m thinking of making my BlogRoll Ajax, really want to unclutter my sidebar.
Fabien
April 27th, 2008 9:44 pm
I think a lot of people have stopped having blogrolls nowadays because they are very afraid of Google and what might happen to their rank in the SERPS. I have tried to reduce the amount of links I have in my blogroll and I monitor when people add or remove my link from their own blogs. If someone I did a reciprocal exchange with has a NoFollow on my link - I return the favour.
I’ve actually been thinking of getting rid of my blogroll altogether - only because I am constantly being pressured by the search engines (namely, Google). In order to reduce the possibility of being penalized by them. But for now I’m keeping it because I’ve decided that I don’t have an overly huge amount of people on it.
I definitely agree that having links to other sites in the actual posts are preferable than having a blogroll. When you have a link to another site in your actual post, it just makes things look better and it’s more contextual. You are also giving people an incentive to come to your site more because each time you’ve linked to a different post of their’s from a different post. More visitors are always good.
I think if I do decide to ditch my blogroll, I will create a separate page with those links still available so the people linking to me don’t feel totally rejected. It will be good to create a resource list of quality blogs, as this is what I have wanted to do for a while now - and yes, ProBlogger.Net will be one of the top blogs I link to.
Rúben M.
April 27th, 2008 9:46 pm
I thins a little bit of my blogroll, and then i use a no follow plugin :) only share traffic no pagerank, only 1 on my blogroll have follow
Chetan
April 27th, 2008 10:05 pm
I prefer not to have blogroll on my blog, as i dont love giving the link juice to any websites from the whole site. There is already a top commentators section, where my readers get benefited for commenting, so blogroll dont seem that important for me.
Michael Martin
April 27th, 2008 10:05 pm
I think they would be too political to maintain as well.
On the other hand, they’re also my favorite way of being linked to. There’s something very gratifying in the fact that someone enjoys your site so much that they would recommend it to their readers on every page of their site. Especially if it’s just a short blogroll, and you’ve managed to get in there!
It’s the nicest complement in blogging I think. :)
Gala
April 27th, 2008 10:18 pm
I link to the websites I find around the place that really push my buttons, but I admit my links page needs an update — some of the sites on there have stopped updating or gone downhill.
Whenever I hear the term blogroll I think of a link exchange or trade, which I don’t do because to me it’s totally meaningless. I work hard to bring my readership good quality content, & I think everything else on my site should reflect that. Having a bunch of links to sites that don’t offer any value is kind of dishonest, I think, & linking to crappy sites just to see a link back is really more about ego gratification than anything useful.
I’m more than happy to link to sites that may never link back — it doesn’t really matter that much to me. It’s more important to me to pass along the good stuff that I see; I don’t need a kickback, traffic-based or otherwise.
Andrea
April 27th, 2008 10:27 pm
Havign played aroudn with this a bit, I’m not sure hpw much it affects google, but if you’re on enough blogrolls, it does affect your technorati rankings. In mommy-blogging circles there are a lot of “blogroll exchanges”, where you sign up, put the blogroll code on your site, and get included. Instant couple-hundred links right there.
Tony Kummer
April 27th, 2008 10:27 pm
On smaller religious oriented blogs, the blog roll is a way for the blogger to identify their type of religion. Like emerging church bloggers will link to a different group than a catholic apologist type blogger.
The net result is readers trust you if you link to people they already trust in your blogroll.
Velveteen Mind - Megan
April 27th, 2008 10:43 pm
I have a blogroll and I maintain it for my own daily reading purposes.
While I still subscribe to blogs in Google Reader, I only do so for research purposes (ie– “search all”). I never read in a reader any longer.
Therefore, my blogroll is a list of who I want to remember to read. But yeah, it’s a pain to maintain.
Pssst… I also use it as a way to promote newly published posts via other bloggers’ incessant “referral link” stat-checking.
Rob O.
April 27th, 2008 11:20 pm
We have a “Favorite Links” page that’s essentially a categorized blogroll, but for the most part, I prefer to liberally pepper my posts with links rather than maintain a blogroll.
A static link list is fine, but when you include inline links within your posts, you’re not only offering your readers a link, but you also have the opportunity to “sell” that link - to give your audience some reason(s) why you think they should click it.
Daniel
April 27th, 2008 11:34 pm
Due to the requests I received to add somebody to my links (blogroll) or to the fact that the reasons for the adding alinks were so different, I decided to make dfferent blogrolls, i.e. “Blogs I read” is separated from “Friends of mine” and “Interesting blogs”.
I think it’s the best way for your readers. So they why you linked somebody and they can imagine before clicking on them what the should expect to find (personal blog, professional blog…)
Tom
April 27th, 2008 11:59 pm
I have a Blogroll but it includes sites that relate to the content I write about, plus a site I used to write for. In addition, I have ProBlogger on there because it is my favorite Blog. I use it to link to related content, not to add other bloggers that don’t don’t have content that relates to my blog. Since ProBlogger is such a great resource I include it so others that may want to blog know about it and it is my way of paying homage to a great site.
Andrew Vazzano
April 28th, 2008 12:06 am
It’s especially hard for me. I run a NY Mets baseball website and there are always new blogs that start up every day. I won’t always add the links if they ask me, but track them for a few days and see if they stay consistent / good.
If so, I throw them up on the bar, if they already have mine up, that is.
Ryan McLean
April 28th, 2008 12:31 am
i don’t have a blogroll but this is mainly because I don’t have many blogging friends yet that I can showcase. If anyone in interested in forming a relationship with me and trading links on our sites I would be very interested. Maybe I can start my blogroll as a result of this post. Thanks Darren
Just leave me a comment everyone
Rajaie
April 28th, 2008 12:58 am
Well, there are three kinds of blogrolls in my opinion.
The really long ones where the blog owners have exchanged links with every single blogger in their niche. The ones that really do list interesting blogs that might have helped the owner or that the owner likes reading. The third kind, are the ones where you have to pay to get your site listed, I consider these as advertising, and a great way too.
Fadzuli
April 28th, 2008 12:59 am
Why not have it on a separate page specifically for this. At least you still can refer to your friends if you forget the URLs.
Aaron from Webspear
April 28th, 2008 1:17 am
I do not have one. But I plan to put one in the future. There are so many good blogs and I find it hard to single out a few.
Jimson Lee
April 28th, 2008 1:22 am
I think we are seeing a trend towards site-wide Blogrolls, to home page only blogrolls, and finally eliminating Blogrolls completely.
If they do exists, most Blogs are putting them on the bottom of the page instead of the sidebar.
Sangesh
April 28th, 2008 1:39 am
Gee, man yes you should and I would love to be in your blogroll as well.
cheers :)
Carl Pruitt
April 28th, 2008 1:40 am
Mine is mostly just a list of links to reference materials.
But I do reference some useful related blog. I removed the
term blogroll from the list though and just call it Resources.
But mine is a mortgage industry related blog and not one
on the subject of making money online or on blogging so
the effects are a little different,
Thanks!
Carl Pruitt
Rob Williams
April 28th, 2008 1:48 am
I used to use a blogroll also. Then I switched to showing my Bloglines public list to say “read what I’m reading”. Then I switched to gReader and there really isn’t a way to show everyone the feeds I want to point to. However I can share items, not entire blogs. And I think that is probably better. The URL I linked my name to in this comment goes to my tumblr blog that aggregates gReader shared items with delicious, flickr, and digg (most everything I find interesting and want to share). That is RSSed into the blog as “the blogroll” now.
Katherine Reschke
April 28th, 2008 2:14 am
I have avoided putting a blogroll on my site because of the politics. There are blogs that are written by friends of mine that I just wouldn’t recommend for various reasons - how do you tell a friend that???
So for me it is easier just to avoid the whole issue and not have a blogroll.
Rob O.
April 28th, 2008 2:34 am
I agree, Fadzuli. My Favorite Sites blogroll is on a separate page that’s available via my navigation menu from any other page.
That page doesn’t get many hits or get a lot of attention from my readers, so I don’t put much into maintaining it - I’d rather expend my efforts on actual content…
paz
April 28th, 2008 2:37 am
I agree with you about the Google juice thing: a link in the content is worth much more than a blogroll link. But I don’t think that blogrolls are over: I still see many blogrolls in small blogs and I like to look at them as “suggestions”.
Popular Wealth
April 28th, 2008 2:42 am
Not all blogrolls are created equal.
Be weary of the built in wordpress blogroll, it’s not google friendly. For a more Google friendly, and safe to show off, blogroll do the following.
Go to Google Reader (where you can see which blogs you follow via RSS) and create a folder. Place all of the blogs you follow in that folder. Make it public, grab the Google widget code for that folder - paste it to your site.
It’s javascript so you lose no juice and it displays who you really do follow via RSS. Try it.
TSciacqua
April 28th, 2008 3:11 am
I love a well-edited blogroll. They are usually one of the first things I look for when I start reading a new blog. I think you can tell a lot about the blogger by what’s on the blogroll — how tuned in she is to the niche, what she finds interesting. And it’s a really good way to find other blogs that the user might not know about.
All that being said, I think the key phrase is “well-edited.” I don’t think blogrolls should be rewards for others linking to you. The blog has to have some value for your audience. And you have to check them regularly to make sure the link still works, the blog is still what you thought it was, etc. (I subscribe via RSS to all the stuff on my blogrolls so I can see what I’m sending people to.)
I’ve seen a few blogs where the list gets unruly. Subcategories can help with that. You have to make it easy for different types of readers to find what they are interested in specifically.
I wonder though, do you think blogrolls should be alphabetical or do you think they should be listed in descending interest value? I go back and forth on what I think is more user-friendly.
C. Douglas
April 28th, 2008 3:32 am
Still have a blogroll, depends on the site, on some client blogs I use the Blogroll Page plugin if they have a ton of resources and don’t want to clutter up their sidebars.
David
April 28th, 2008 6:08 am
I have one, but I call it “Blogs I Read”. I have not listed every blog I read, but the ones I read pretty much daily or every second day. I would not post any that I would not personally read myself.
guardian angel
April 28th, 2008 8:19 am
I do not have blogroll. But I do have links to my favorite blogs. I do not call them blogroll, I call them Blogs I Admire. This means I do not just put a link on my sidebar for SEO purposes. I blog for humans, not for software.
Thanks.
Luis Cruz
April 28th, 2008 1:20 pm
I haven’t put up a blogroll on my site. Instead, I link to other sites if I find posts worth writing about, and I “dofollow” comments.
bgrundon
April 28th, 2008 1:53 pm
I use Wordpress which allows you to categorize your blogroll. Rather than just trading links I like to use our blog roll as a list of resources readers may find useful and helpful. I like checking out other sites that have this set up, it always a good way to find resources and is a good way to build trust.
Mary (MPJ)
April 28th, 2008 2:31 pm
I have a blogroll. It’s reserved for my regular commenters. When a new reader asks to be put on my blogroll, I tell them they need to read and comment on my blog for a few months before I will add them.
Goldenzen
April 28th, 2008 5:17 pm
I am reminded of a comment I read when preparing to start my blog about “thought leadership.” If we have any desire to influence others I think we can have a more profound effect through collaberation. I have been direrected to some very powerful connections through the introductions of others, both online and off. I appreciate the effort on behalf of the blogger.
However, I am slow to add them on my own site, and hope other are too. I would like to spend a wee bit of time around the site before I recommend it to others - again back to “thought leadership.”
Thanks for you power posting Darren. You are a not only a good source, but an inspiration.
Brad
April 28th, 2008 11:11 pm
I only have one links list on any of my blogs at the moment and its aptly titled “Bloggers A Lot Smarter Than Me”. These are the top dozen or so blogs about blogging I subscribe to and read religiously. Since my blogging blog caters to noobs I think it is important to also be pointing them towards people with a lot more experience or different takes than I have on the subject.
I also put it up to give me quick access to blogs I am likely to comment on. I don’t know if it is the link from the blogroll or the fact that I comment on these blogs, but it makes me smile when people Like Darren actually show up on my blog catalog or mybloglog widget.
If you are a niche blogger, having one linking to all your competitors might not be the best thing unless you are getting reciprocal linking and aren’t always blogging the same ideas. Some niches like social issues like I have on one of my blogs had the same thing Darren mentioned happen to it, where people begging to get on it, but then when I added them I actually started losing Page Rank so I dropped the whole thing.
My new option is simply to make a noindex, nofollow links page. People like Darren get mentioned enough in my posts that any other linking I give them really is just superficial and a convenient place to have them collected, which is something else to think about when mentioning another blog often.
@balootisme
April 29th, 2008 12:08 am
darren,
i heard people say that people will ban those blog who had BLOGROLL.
google is smart this day..
actually, google is ban blog put FEATURED SITE @ paid link @ text-link-ads links…
does this true??
Al
April 29th, 2008 2:23 am
I have a blogroll. I limit it to those blogs in my niche that I read regularly. When I drop a subscription to a blog, it comes out of my blogroll too. Similarly, when a blog subscription moves from my “just trying” tag to the “essential reading” tag in my RSS reader, I add it to my blogroll.
I’ve had a few requests from people to add their sites to my blogroll, but I simply explain that I keep my blogroll to the sites I actually read. They all take that graciously. Of course, I also thank them for the tip and that I am going to subscribe to check it out.
Pentad
April 29th, 2008 5:30 am
Like most, I started one from the very beginning, because it looked like it was a ‘usual’ habit or thing to do. These days I’m trying to weed out, and eventually get rid of it. Blogrolls have a tendency to grow and grow, and my eyes grow weary of looking at blogs with blogrolls that take up their entire sidebar, and going on for miles after the last post on the front page.
brian
April 29th, 2008 11:50 am
my site is relatively new, but i’ve always thought of my blogroll as a place to give readers a different perspective or a view into things i like, people i respect, etc. it’s skewed more heavily to the niche in which i write, but i don’t limit it.
Talking Books Librarian
April 30th, 2008 2:48 am
I like blogrolls, especially those that list blogs similar in scope to the one you’re reading. Blogrolls that list just random blogs don’t seem to be very useful to me. So far I have a small blogroll on my blog.
netvalar
May 2nd, 2008 2:48 pm
I use 1 blogroll for blogs that I read often, not that I update it often as I add or delete from my RSS reader. I try to keep the blogs listed to those that relate.
I am working on adding another blogroll but the links are to specific articles from my own blog. This is for a random list of other articles and using blogroll lets me set the odds of each article coming up.
cat
May 11th, 2008 3:55 pm
I have an extensive blog roll on my site (linked above) because of my subject - Designers who Blog (includes the surrounding industries as designers are also writers, photographers, illustrators, marketers, etc).
It’s not been on my main index page ever since I discovered a great Wordpress plugin created by Zühlke O’Connor - Zo’C Powerblogroll Plugin.
My index page is now reserved for bloggers I have constant contact with either via email or in person.
Google doesn’t seem to mind as it hasn’t hurt page rank at all (unless I should be a 7 or 8).
The benefits?
1) At a glance I can easily see which subjects I need to cover more (which is what brought me here - I was looking for blog designers to add to DWB).
2) I can see which blogs I’ve featured without going through the archives (that’s been updated too and is quite handy, but not as easy to skim as the blog roll).
3) It’s a useful resource for those looking for blogs by subject.
But it’s really down to your niche and what services you provide. From the very beginning I choose readers over potential page rank, even though I was warned against it.
This was because DWB was meant to be a play blog where I learned how to blog so I took a different aim from the beginning.
Yeah, if I’d known it was going to last this long, I would have named it something more massively more clever than ‘Designers who Blog”.
Hindsight …
Cindy Sue Causey
May 27th, 2008 1:37 pm
Have blogrolls on my blog.. Actually several gradually breaking more and more into various categories.. Realized the last few days that I need to take that info back to my static site and instead expand on the same blogrolled links to give them their due “props”.. A cold, hard link just isn’t enough.. :)
Just taking a few days to do so as I’m still under two months of having renewed home computer access at home.. So much to do, so little Time each day.. :))
Petes2cents
July 10th, 2008 4:56 pm
I have read a lot more positive things on having a blogroll vs. not having one…traffic for one, but it has to be high quality websites, to drive the traffic back to your site.
I have added one…that’s all I can say, I’ll try it out for six months and see what happens. If I notice a surge, great.
One thing though that your right on is, that quality content, with informative follow up links, drives traffic to your site and search engines like Google, Yahoo, Live, Love You…
Increasing the quality of my content has helped me 100%
moserw
July 28th, 2008 4:02 pm
I have updated my theme recently to go with a single sidebar theme and one of the things I had to let go was the blogroll. In fact I am thinking of have a page devoted exclusively to the blogroll and other links/pages that I have myself or others I would like to link to.
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