Blogroll Link
A blogroll link is a link in a blog’s list of recommended sites, usually in the sidebar or footer. Because it appears on every page, it carries little SEO value today.
Origin of Blogroll Links
Blogrolls date back to the early days of blogging in the late 1990s and 2000s. Bloggers used them to point readers toward friends, fellow writers and favorite sites in their niche. A typical blogroll was a simple list of names in the sidebar under a heading like “Blogs I Read” or “Friends of This Site.”
Back then, blogrolls worked as a discovery tool. Search engines were less sophisticated, social media was young, and readers often found new blogs by clicking through the lists on blogs they already liked. Being added to a popular blogger’s blogroll could send steady traffic for years.
Blogging platforms made them easy. Early versions of WordPress included a built-in Links Manager for exactly this purpose, and platforms such as Blogger offered blogroll widgets. Many blogrolls grew through informal swaps, where two bloggers added each other to their lists, which made blogroll links one of the earliest forms of reciprocal links.
As SEO grew, blogrolls changed purpose. Site owners noticed that a single blogroll placement produced a link on every page of the host site, and those links passed PageRank under the systems of the time. Blogroll spots began to be traded and sold, often with keyword anchors instead of blog names. WordPress removed the Links Manager from new installs in 2012, and blogrolls slowly faded from most modern blog designs.
Current SEO Value
Today, a blogroll link is generally a low-value link. Search engines treat it as part of the site template rather than editorial content. The link sits away from the main content, has no surrounding text to give it context and rarely gets clicked.
Google has long given more weight to links placed within the body of relevant content than to boilerplate links in sidebars and footers. A sidebar link in a blogroll tells search engines very little about why one site recommends another. There is no paragraph explaining the connection and no topical context beyond the list itself.
The sitewide nature of blogrolls also limits their value. A blogroll on a blog with 3,000 posts can show up as 3,000 backlinks in an SEO tool, but it all comes from one referring domain. Search engines understand this and tend to treat repeated template links as roughly one link, not thousands.
Some value remains in the right setting. A blogroll link from a respected, relevant blog can still send a little referral traffic and acts as a signal of a real relationship between two sites. If the anchor is your brand name and the link appears among genuine recommendations, it is harmless. It should not be expected to move rankings.
Risks of Sitewide Blogroll Links
The main risk comes from how blogroll links were abused. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, paid sitewide links in sidebars and blogrolls were one of the easiest ways to buy PageRank. Sellers offered monthly rental of blogroll spots, often with exact-match keyword anchors, across networks of blogs.
Google responded. Its spam policies now list widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites as an example of link spam. A blogroll placement that was paid for and passes ranking value falls into the same category as other paid links. When Google spots patterns like this, the links are usually ignored, and heavy use can contribute to a manual action for unnatural links.
Warning signs during a backlink audit include sitewide blogroll links using commercial keyword anchors, blogrolls on blogs unrelated to your niche, the same blogroll placement repeated across many sites that share owners, and blogrolls that list dozens of unrelated commercial websites. These patterns suggest bought links rather than genuine recommendations.
Excessive swapping is a smaller risk. A few blogroll exchanges between related bloggers are normal. Large-scale link swaps arranged purely for SEO fall under Google’s guidance on excessive link exchanges, whatever area of the page they appear in.
Better Alternatives
If the goal is a link from a related blog, a contextual link inside a relevant article is far stronger than a blogroll spot. It carries topical context, gets more clicks and looks like an editorial choice.
Guest posting is one of the most direct routes. Writing a useful article for a blog in your niche usually earns a link in the content or author bio, along with exposure to a new audience. A clear explanation of what guest posting involves helps set the right expectations with publishers.
Resource pages are another option. Many blogs keep a page of recommended tools, guides and websites. Unlike a blogroll, a resource page link sits on one dedicated page with descriptions and context. Resource page link building focuses on earning those placements with content that genuinely belongs on the list.
Relationships still matter, as they did in the blogroll era. Joining link building communities and niche blogger groups, commenting thoughtfully, sharing other writers’ work and collaborating on content often leads to natural mentions in posts. These links come with context and tend to last.
If you keep a blogroll on your own site, treat it as a reader feature. List sites you genuinely recommend, use their names as anchors, and add nofollow to any link that is part of a paid or reciprocal arrangement.
Blogroll links belong to an earlier stage of the web, when sidebars full of recommendations helped readers discover new blogs. Today they add little ranking value and can look risky when paid. Focus on contextual links inside relevant content instead.