What Is A Blog Roll?

One of the big things for bloggers is the blog roll.  This is the list of blogs, normally in the sidebar, that the person owning the page either likes or subscribes to.  The average blog has around 10 or so blogs listed in their blog roll, but there are some “Mega Blog Rolls” that can top 100 links!

But just what is the big deal about blog rolls?  Originally, they were designed to build links to other blogs, and as a way for bloggers to share traffic within their community.  Although not all of the blogs in a person’s blog roll will contain related content, this was also a good way for bloggers to gain more authority by increasing the number of backlinks to their site.  In the early days of blogging, these were a pivotal part of an online marketing campaign, but are they still as useful today?

Because blog rolls are imbedded in the JavaScript of the blog, search engines may not register any of the links.  This means that these links will be ignores and not help your site build authority.  Getting a link on one of the “Mega Blog Rolls” out there may be a goal of all bloggers because of their popularity, but many search engines will stop counting links after a certain amount, meaning that getting on one of the “Mega Blog Rolls” will probably do little, if anything, to improve your blogs SEO.

While blog rolls can be a nice feature to promote a blog you like to your readers, they are by no means something you should rely on or worry about.  If you see something you like, by all means, share it with the world!  This is one of the greatest things about blogging and you shouldn’t completely cease, just don’t rely on it to increase traffic to your site.  Building backlinks is best done when you have links to your articles with highly optimized keywords within content.  Authority is increased when these links occur on pages that are relevant to your site, as these will give you higher authority.