The Importance of Having a Blog Roll

[John Wesley]

Is it always necessary to have a blog roll, and to explicitly trade links with other bloggers? I know StevePavlina.com doesn't have one and neither do many other popular sites.

What experiences have you had with this topic?

[mjukr]

The object is to draw as much traffic as possible. I'm guessing that Steve draws so much traffic by himself that adding a blogroll wouldn't impact him significantly. It would probably help others, however!

[Steve Pavlina]

A blogroll is a good idea when you're first starting out. In the first year, I did link swaps with many other bloggers. The shared traffic was helpful for all of us. Many of those bloggers I did link swaps with back then are also enjoying much higher traffic today.

Once your site is established, a blogroll isn't such a good idea. You'll get more link swap requests than you can handle, mostly from low traffic sites that can't possibly help you. Link swaps become lopsided because one site may get 100x as much traffic as the other, so the swaps aren't even close to fair. Once you're getting plenty of traffic and links from other sources, you won't need the blogroll.

To replace the blogroll, you can sell text link ads on your site and generate income from it. I typically earn $1-2K/month from those.

[John Wesley]

Thanks for the response Steve. It's great getting advice from a pro!

[icesar]

I'm with Steve. Initially you have to get your traffic and backlinks from somewhere, and a blogroll is a good way to get started. Ultimately, really good content (easy to say, harder to do) is what will get other bloggers linking to you often without you having to ask them. Also, those one-way links are more valuable in terms of search engine juice

[rossio]

I agree too. Blog rolls are great for us fledgling bloggers, because it does help spread a little link-love, get your blog known in other communities and generally create relationships with other bloggers.

But to be honest, even then it is not absolutely necessary. If you just link generously and often to other bloggers in your posts then you will recieve more than you give. As with most other areas of life really!

As for Steve, heh - he could sneeze and get 50 links so there is little point in actively trying to attract links this way.

Lucky sod

[Michael Chui]

It's also personal taste. Raph Koster's site is an utter mess, in terms of aesthetics, but he also has a blog roll, even though he's probably one of the most popular blogs in his industry, and I think it's more of a "These are people I read and, implicitly, endorse/agree with/like. Check them out, too." He also has some Google Ads.