Blogrolls and SEO

When it comes to updating the blogroll, whether to add new blogs or delete old ones, many bloggers actually never come around to doing it often enough. The reason for this is simple, if you have lots of blogs you like managing your linklist can be a headache. It’s one thing to subscribe through an RSS aggregator just to skim through blogs and never have to worry how many blogs you subscribe to (although you should also manage the feeds so that reading through subscriptions will be more efficient) and a completely different thing choosing how many and which blogs to add on the blogroll and how to present them (topical, alpahbetical, using a scrollbar, using an expandable menu, etc.). As usually happens, when there’s a not too juicy task, someone come’s up with an easier way to do things. Blogrolling is a great example of this. They have made it really to add links to your blogroll and even lets you know when the sites in your blogroll were last updated. However, when it comes to the SEO side of Blogrolling it isn’t a very good idea. The problem with this is that Blogrolling uses javascript and since search engine spiders can’t read the external java code the linklove you just shared actually doesn’t get read by the bots. While this does not affect your blog it does nothing for the bloggers in your blogroll. However, if you prioritize ease over sharing links then there really isn’t anything wrong with Blogrolling. Just don’t go complaining if you don’t get any inbound links from other bloggers who use the same method for managing their linklist!

Originally posted on January 22, 2008 @ 5:22 pm