I’ve had this discussion a number of times on other blogs. With Mitch at least once, on BloggingQuestions, and several others which I can no longer remember.

I do not currently use one, nor do I have any real plans to add one in the coming days. The reasons for this are 3fold (at least the three most prominent in my mind).

1. SEO:

Blogrolls are inherently do-follow links. As my regulars are well aware, I give PLENTY of linklove when it’s appropriate. The rolls just suck it right off the homepage for no real good reason that I can see.

Contextual links (links within a post) are far superior all the way around. Search engines read text first, then go for the links IF at all. Plus, visitors are far more prone to clicking intext links, then sidebar links.

2. Link Exchanges:

The following is a guest post by Donna Fontenot, better know as DazzlinDonna from seo-scoop. Pay attention boys and girls; if you’ve ever had a thousand ideas, but don’t know where to start (who hasn’t?), this is a good one .

Those who know me well, know that I have new site ideas nearly every day. Although I don’t act upon every idea that floats through my head, I do act upon quite a few of them. Occasionally, I’ll start a new site just on a whim, but I at least “try” to be sensible about it before starting one. Essentially, the smart thing to do before I waste time starting a new site is to determine several things:

1. Can the site make money - either while I own it or from selling the site later?

A little reminder of three posts on DennisEdell.com and an EASY $300 on EasyCashContests .

Now I’m not asking about all those cool little SEO tools, that give you all the numbers and such. Instead, lets say you turn on your computer each morning and wish to see who’s linking to you…what do you use?

I’ve heard some say they just use the dashboard:

(Highlighted to the right.)

I however have come to realize recently that this method can be quite ineffective…three reasons I see for this:

1. It shows your comments on do follow blogs; useless for these purposes.

2.  It shows sites where you are top commenter; again useless for these purposes.

3. This morning mine shows this site as linking to me. 1 Million PayPal to the first to explain that to me.

This review is in congratulations to Yan for winning my first contest. My apologies for not getting to it until now…..I guarantee though, it is worth the wait. *wink*

What can I say about Yan Susanto that you can’t already read about. The man is definitely a force to be reckoned with in the blogging community.

I don’t mean this in a “problogger” kinda way (although he does blog full time) but in my opinion, he has one of the most helpful and useful blogs out there……and NO *attitude*, which is extremely important!

You see, Yan (also known as the smiling blogger) runs ThouShallBlog.com, which is quoted as, and certainly is Blogging Tips for Beginners.

He’s got a lot to smile about. Let’s take a small clip right from his about page (linked above)…

Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily. Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages. Source.

Got that? Excellent! It’s an easy to learn and VERY effective technique, that should be a part of every online marketers arsenal (offline marketing as well).

Replicating your promotions in this manner will bring you RSS subscriptions, newsletter sign-ups and sales for weeks, months and even years down the road!

The following is 8 effective and (somewhat) simple ideas with which to achieve this. There are many many more of course, which we will surely get to over time.

1. Purchase Branding Rights To An Existing Viral eBook.

The following guest post is from Andy, who writes for and manages DaBlogger.com. What I like most is the fact that he writes it all from Personal Experience as you will see. This is after all, the best way to write an article when applicable .

In the past few years, I have watched many social bookmarking sites grow and have huge effects on the internet. Many people don’t realize that they can use these sites to promote their own sites and get vast returns. Below are benefits that I have seen these sites have on other websites.

#1 - Instant Traffic
Social bookmarking sites can give your site an instant traffic boost. Getting one link of homepages of digg, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us or any other bookmarking site can give me huge traffic boosts.

Most traffic will be targeted since your post will be under specific categories and you can attach keywords to your posts.

Hello all!

First, sincerest apologies for not posting in about a week. I’m still hard at work on that blog project I’ve spoken about. I’m hoping to be able to announce/launch it next week…it’s lookin’ good so far

Now then, a brand new feature here starting this coming Monday, the 30th. At the beginning/end of each month I will be recapping each and every post from the previous month (or at least the best ones) with a link and small caption.

This is a little different then most of the other “link round-up” posts I see, as this is all internal. A good bunch of the ones I see are all external, wherein bloggers give the love and link-out to the posts they come across on other blogs. Also an excellent practice, which I’ll get more into another time.

Why is this something all Bloggers should consider? Just a few ideas (in no real particular order)…..

As you may have guessed, this article is in regards to linking and primarily which is the best *code* to use when doing so.

Should you have it open in the same window…effectively drawing people away from your site…or a new window…leaving the original one in tact for the reader to go back too.

This thought popped into my head while reading a post by Lynn Terry, entitled Stop Linking To Your Home Page!

This is all about internal or deep-linking as it’s called. The act of linking to pages within your blog from outside sources OR from within the blog itself, as I did here in the first sentence.

We will get a lot more into the workings of internal deep-linking in the days to come, as it is VERY important for SEO. For our purposes here though, we will stick to one specific aspect - Same window/New window, how do visitors prefer they open.

Advertising your website is a matter of dollars and sense; as in, where does it make the most sense to put your dollars?

A recent survey conducted by Marketingsherpa.com (as reported in the Marketing Report newsletter) showed that search engine optimization and in-house generated email lists rank neck-and-neck as the top performers when it comes to return on investment.

A few highlights:

• Paid search ads are favored by 49% of marketers as the highest ROI.
• In-house email lists received the top rating for ROI by 47% of those surveyed.
• 34% of marketers plan to increase their spending on search engines by 5% or more.
• Search engine optimization is growing in efficacy; 45% ranked it as a high ROI compared to 33% in 2005.
• In-house blogs are planned by 35% of marketers, compared with 18% last year.

UGH! Broken links everywhere. Is there anything more annoying to a site owner?!?!? Not only that, but you can easily lose business; perhaps a LOT of business depending on the circumstances.

If it’s a blog you can very easily lose readers if they find too many broken, non working links. Reader loss could quite possibly mean revenue loss, both in the present AND future…most will never return.

Think especially of new readers full of hope, glee and anticipation in finding a new blog in their niche of choice…what a let down. Not to mention how unprofessional it looks, especially if it’s more then 1 or 2 links.

You also have to be aware of the SEO ramifications that can occur due to too many broken links. Search engines, especially Google will not appreciate it…not one bit. Links, incoming outgoing and internal are the backbone of Google ranking.