Blogrolls are dumb

[Garrett Albright]

...because they usually consist of a list of blogs with names only. Just seeing a blog's name doesn't really tell you what the blog is about. And, really, when was the last time you, as a reader, clicked on a name in someone else's blogroll?

Sure, in terms of SEO, if Blog A puts Blog B on its blogroll, Blog B gets another inbound link, but it's a low-quality one since it's just the blog's name with (usually) no context or descriptive elements at all -- just as bad for search engines as for humans.

Instead, Blog A should link to Blog B in a blog entry, where the purpose and content of Blog B can be described. Including some "deep links" to specific Blog B articles would be even better. Sure, the link to Blog B only appears on one page of Blog A instead of every single page as a blogroll might, but, though I'm no SEO pro, I'm willing to bet Google doesn't give a thousand links from Blog A to Blog B much more value than just one.

Agree? Disagree?

[Leonard Chen]

Blogrolls are not dumb if your intention is really just to link to the people you like or read daily. But keep it to a minimum because for every link that you place on the sidebar/blogroll, you are also transferring PageRank out of your blog.

For SEO purposes, it's usually not recommended primarily because links on sidebars don't carry as much weight as the ones in a blog's content.

[Lars-Christian]

While I see your point, I don't agree at all. Personally, I highly value blogrolls, because when I enjoy reading a blog, I most often find that I enjoy reading other, similar blogs that are enjoyed by the author of the blogs I like.

Blogrolls created on the grounds to increase traffic however, are completely useless, and that I think is where your point comes in. I once asked the author of a blog I read on a semi-regular basis if he wanted to exchange links, because I thought his readers would be interested in my blog and vice versa. He "respectfully" declined because he didn't feel my blog was popular enough, and that he had a 500 unique readers per day or something requirement for blogroll exchange. This epitomizes what makes blogrolls suck in my opinion, and I'm sure you'll agree.

If you are selective however, and choose links that you think will be enjoyed by your readers, your blogroll can actually have some real value.

Oh and I almost forgot, welcome to Bloggst Garret

[geegel]

The blogroll links count as site wide links and thus pass more PR (the main page of a blog has the highest PR value in almost any blog). I do agree though that they do not help very much in targeting a specific keyword as the anchor text tends to be rather general.

It's a matter of perspective really, personally I don't even have a blogroll and prefer getting links inside posts because they have a higher contextual relevance. There are approximately 200 factors that help establish the SERP for a specific query in Google and the Page Rank, although very important, is just one of them.

Best regards, George

[infektia]

I like blogrolls, I actually look at other's blogrolls when I visit their site, I might find a similar site or something new!
It doesn't increase your or other people's PG's but what the heck

[vimoh]

Blogrolls don't serve a purpose worth the space they take. Regularly updated blogrolls are rare. I would rather read tons of blogs on my feedreader and link to individual posts that are good instead of giving a blog eternal link. This works well if the blogs linked to are not topical or follow multiple topics.

On my blog, I have replaced the blogroll with a miniblog. It links to individual posts, gives some context about what follows and in addition, brings back traffic through trackbacks!

[SpencerHive]

For me a blogroll is just a way to show appreciation of the blogs that I like and would recommend to the readers of my own blog. Putting any more into a blogroll is pointless, for many of the reasons Garrett pointed out.

[Melissa]

I click on people's blog rolls all the time but I do see where listing a person's name is hard to figure out.

A good way to make the blogroll better would be to have a link under it where your visitor can click and view the same list of blogs but with a description of the site or a rating or maybe even the reason why you've 'rolled' it

[Makimaki]

Originally Posted by Garrett Albright ...because they usually consist of a list of blogs with names only. Just seeing a blog's name doesn't really tell you what the blog is about. And, really, when was the last time you, as a reader, clicked on a name in someone else's blogroll? Sure, in terms of SEO, if Blog A puts Blog B on its blogroll, Blog B gets another inbound link, but it's a low-quality one since it's just the blog's name with (usually) no context or descriptive elements at all -- just as bad for search engines as for humans. Instead, Blog A should link to Blog B in a blog entry, where the purpose and content of Blog B can be described. Including some "deep links" to specific Blog B articles would be even better. Sure, the link to Blog B only appears on one page of Blog A instead of every single page as a blogroll might, but, though I'm no SEO pro, I'm willing to bet Google doesn't give a thousand links from Blog A to Blog B much more value than just one. Agree? Disagree?

Nice to see you here Garrett..

One again, I'll like to point to a helpful link on the topic of blogrolls from Andy Beard:

How a Blogroll can Kill your PageRank

(Andy, join us at Bloggst.. if you haven't already!)

[vimoh]

Nice article. Thanks for the link Makimaki.