Lee Lefever has defined a blogroll as

“a listing of websites that often appears as links on a weblog. This list of links is used to relate the site owner’s interest in or affiliation with other website owners.”

Since that pretty much sums up what I think of a blogroll as, I’ll let him have the credit for defining the term.

There has been some talk both pro and con about having a blogroll. Lately, the talk has been a bit more con. The really popular sites or those considered to be authoritative ones like ProBlogger dont’ have a blogroll citing that it’s become too “political” because of all the requests to be on his (that’s one of the drawbacks to being popular — people are always asking you for something — I’m never asked so what does that tell you about my popularity?).

Blogging Startup has one of the best articles I read on blogrolls. Jim talks about the myth of the blogroll (that it takes visitors away from your site) and goes on to make a pretty strong case for having a blogroll. “Link Love” is never mentioned, though, so be forewarned.

As for the SEO value of blogrolls, as with any other outbound link on your website, they have value up to a point. Using a Javascript tool or service (such as MyBlogLog) to produce your blogroll results in virtually no SEO value for you or those listed in it as the bots don’t read Java (yet). Steve Johnson wrote a comprehensive post on blogroll creation and has some worthwhile points about choosing your reciprocal links carefully and with forethought.

I know I read somewhere an article on moving your blogroll to a separate page and why this is a good practice and what conditions under which you should do this and what conditions you should not. I can’t find it, right now, but it’s somewhere in one of these shipping boxes I call favorites folders and I’ll update this post once I’ve found it. I don’t want to paraphrase it as my memory is notoriously bad and I don’t want to mislead you. I do want to point out that many of the articles already cited along with this one at skelliwag mentions having your blogroll appear only on one page, not all of them. If, like me, you have it in your sidebar, then you need to address this as it’s considered a duplication by Google and can hurt you in the long run. There’s a teeny tiny bit of code you add to your sidebar template that handles that.

But just HAVING a blogroll doesn’t seem to me to be enough. A list of websites tucked over on someone’s sidebar doesn’t get me particuarly motivated in clicking one. There needs to be more and how much more is going to be your call.

Lyndi at Nice2All has written a post on sprucing up your blogroll. While I totally agree that graphics are more enticing to click, I take issue with using just 125×125 images. To me, that’s like having yet another PW ad bank on your sidebar. I’m not much of an ad clicker and since I don’t feel that I’m unique in that respect, I have to think I need to provide my visitors with a reason for taking the chance on that link. Images are one thing, but there are other things I can do to encourage that click. Oh, and she gives you that teeny tiny bit of code that keeps your blogroll limited to your front page only, so that alone makes clicking on her link worthwhile.

I certainly have no blogroll worth emulating. Mine is very short, not often updated (I did some updating today just to illustrate a point) and is purposely self-interested. I have no aspirations of achieveing any SEO from any of those links – they are solely there because I genuinely LIKE those sites. If I were a better person, there would be more than 5 lonely links, but alas, I am who I am and those of you deserving of link love will just have to wait your turn to be featured in a post. I do so much better with that!

So, take a look over there on the right at my blogroll. It’s not extensive — just 5 sites listed. Of the 5, only two have a graphic image and one isn’t square. Which one got your attention first? Hover your mouse over each entry in the blogroll. Which link or image has a tool tip that piques your interest?  Does the graphic get you first, then the tool tip convince you? Or does the tool tip turn you off? Would you click it if you still had an interest but it was just a link and there was no tool tip?