A blogroll is a list of links that may appear in the sidebar of your blog. These links may be favorite sites or professional affiliations. Usually the links in a blogroll have a direct correlation to the industry or business of the blog owner. I have a strict criteria for choosing blogs for the blogroll.
Typically I recommend listing five links in your blogroll. For many businesses this number allows for a good variety. Below are the criteria for settling on blogs in your blogroll.
- Relevance to your brand/company
- Traffic – see authority or total number of social media fans
- Frequency of Posts – recent?
- Comments – more than ZERO
- Advertisers on the blog?
Relevance is very important. You want to attract readers to your blog that have similar interests. There’s an unwritten rule in the blogosphere that if someone lists you on their blogroll, you should reciprocate and add them. Link building is a high-level search technique to get you found faster online by Google. Not all parties may participate and reciprocate but it’s a great starting point to list another professional and/or relevant blog.
Traffic is an important factor in choosing a blog for your blogroll. If you are trying to build your business you want to align yourself with some high traffic websites. Below are two blog search tools to find blogs within your industry and learn more about their popularity.
Get familiar with Blog Rating System in Technorati
Google blogsearch is an excellent tool to find like blogs and technorati is a great tool learn more about traffic or as they call it authority. Again, high traffic websites are a best practice to include in your blogroll.
Sometimes we have a hard time finding a rating on technorati. If so, move to the next criteria for choosing a blog. If you find a blog that has a similar industry but there are no new posts for more than month. Move on! You want to choose blogs that have some activity.
Good blog activity may include both posts and comments. Comments are an excellent indication that a blog is active and generating traffic.
And lastly, blogs with advertising is a pretty good indication that they are generating traffic. Look for known brands on the blog site. If you see REI or any well known company, its probably a good choice for your blogroll.
Once your blogroll is created, plan to become an active blogger. Most people believe this is done solely on their blog site but this is not true. It is time to visit the blogs in your blogroll and begin commenting.
Becoming a though leader or participant in other blogs will drive traffic to your blog. As a thougth leader, show off your experise in your field of knowledge. You should devise a schedule to regularly comment in other blogs. Essentially, you should be posting weekly in your blog, other blogs, and in social media accounts.
Blogs are one of the highest level strategies for acquiring organic website traffic. HubSpot software can assist you with integrating all your tools into one dashboard. Obviously, the only thing HubSpot wouldn’t cover is your posts in other blogs. See my blog about Luring traffic to your website.
15 Business Blogging Mistakes & Easy Fixes
