Blogroll
Posted On Friday, April 4th, 2008 By Jay
I noticed something crazy lately. You see, I read a fair bit of mmo blogs during the day. Crappy build and data systems do this. When I have to sit through 5 minutes to see a minute(lol) change in game because of a lack of real time data updates I tend to read blogs. That whole rant is for another day. And to save face, my companies build protocols are actually quite good, so is the engine.
When reading all these blogs, there are those blogs that don’t have 6 billion links on their blog roll and those that do. Those that do not have 6 billion links on their blog roll also do not have any advertisements. I’m fairly curious about this. I know that blogs, myspace-esque community sites are all about links and friends and contact. Does the blog roll system work that way? I’ve seen an add-on that will notify the admin of blogs that point to it, but is that really important? I really want some good comments on this, since I’m blog ignorant.
Comment away!
I saw your post on Blog Azeroth so I thought I would chime in with a respose.
I am a web developer graphic artist for a living, and nice design is important to me. I keep my blog relatively clean of unnecessary junk and keep links down to a minimum. My blogroll is pretty tiny in comparison to some people. There are a few I subscribe to, but a lot I just randomly browse to on any given day. I haven’t found the need to put up ads or what not as my readership is fairly small and I am running on completely free services anyways so I have no overhead.
I do run Google Analytics so I know what my views are at, how many unique visitors I get, as well as when people link to me.
Blog rolls are useful to help expose people to new blogs, or similar blogs. Its also nice because search engines discover new sites based on links, so links to other blogs helps the search engines know what sites you think are relevant and useful. Think of it like networking (as in business networking) but online.
I just started a new site which aggregates hundreds (well, over 100 now, soon to be more) blogs into one master feed. it makes finding new blog info and reading it much easier.
http://www.warcraftbloggers.com I just added you to the aggregation.
Cheers,
joshua
The Blogroll system at it’s core is a simple way for you to link to whatever sites you like. How you decide who gets shown on your blog is entirely up to you. Some bloggers categorize by bloggers in their niche area (Priest only, druid only, healers, etc) because they realize readers who read about them might be interested in other similar ones.
Others handle it by link backs (I link to you if you link to me) but this gets cumbersome fast because sooner or later you’re going to end up with the problem I have where you get lots of inbound links. Having a wall of links isn’t very productive or appealing since it’s been found that people don’t even bother clicking if theres over like 30 links (they don’t know where to start, right?).
There are addons that notify you when someone links to you. Are they essential? No. But I use them anyway because it’s a good way to handle what the rest of the community thinks about you and what you’re writing about (like if they link to your post, for example). I’ve discovered many excellent blogs because I can track who has linked to me and in what context. Remember that as a blogger it’s not just you feeding the rest of the world. Everyone has a chance to interact with each other with their own blogs and with their comments.
Hope this helps!
Thanks for the response!
@Drotara: I feel the same way.
@Joshua: That makes sense. I also saw warcraftbloggers and have subscribed. Great idea!
@Matticus: Good clarification and thanks for reminding me about the community aspect of blogging. Message received.