Why Blogrolling is Useless (Updated)

Shortly after FHK launched we began searching for ways to increase our rankings on the search engines. The prevailing wisdom was that one good way to do this is to maintain a blogroll (that’s the ridiculously long list of blogs in the sidebar of many blogs), as it is a good way for bloggers to exchange much needed “links,” increase their link count, and move up in the ratings.

There were a few “monster” blogrolls that everyone was trying to get on, and I had one particular one in mind. I e-mailed, and begged and pleaded, and finally, the administrator of the blogroll heard my cries and added Ft. Hard Knox to his blogroll. I was so excited, because I was sure my ratings would double over night. Afterall, Ft. Hard Knox had just been added to every major blogroll in the conservative blogosphere! So I watched Technorati…and watched…lost some sleep watching that night…and guess what?! I didn’t get one single link on Technorati as a result of being added to that HUGE blogroll.

To make matters worse, my link count on Technorati actually started dropping over the next few weeks.

Something had to be wrong…I checked around, and sure enough, the blogroll administrator had done everything correctly. We were there – on all of these blogrolls, but the links weren’t being counted on Technorati. The blogroll administrator was using the popular blogroll service, Blogrolling, which is also the one we were using.

So I began researching. To my disappointment, I learned that blogroll links contained within javascript are no longer counted on Technorati, and neither are any links over six months old. So, no only were we not getting additional links from being added to the blogroll, but links from the bloggers I’d convinced to trade links with us six months ago were dropping off.

What to do?

Fortunately, we use Wordpress for our blog, and I’ve checked, and the links from the Wordpress blogrolls ARE still counting on Technorati (the other search engines like Google are harder to gauge, because they are not up-front about how their calculations are performed).

If you have a bunch of blogrolls on Blogrolling, you can simply use the OPML code from those blogrolls to import your links to Wordpress.

That’s easier than it sounds.

1. Log in to Blogrolling
2. Click “Get Code” under the blogroll you want to import to Wordpress
3. Scroll down to “OPML” and click “Click to select the code”
4. Log in to your Wordpress blog, and go to the Dashboard
5. Mouseover “Blogroll,” then click “Import Links” on the drop-down menu (UPDATED, per Ron Goodwyne, our IT Guy: “The mouseover…works if you are using the admin drop menu plugin for WordPress. Without that plugin you have to actually click Blogroll in the menu.”
6. Under “Specify an OPML URL:” paste the OPML code you just copied from Blogrolling
7. Click on the “Import OPML File” button

That’s it…the links will appear on your blogroll. If you’re consolidating more than one Blogrolling blogroll, you may now need to weed through you Wordpress blogroll and delete the duplicates. Within a day or two, your links will be showing on your blog friends’ link counts on Technorati.

Now, all you have to do is convince your friends to reciprocate the favor. Again. Good luck.

If those of you bloggers who use other blogging software than Wordpress have suggestions or ideas on developing blogrolls that “count” on Technorati, please feel free to include them in the comments section below, and we be sure they get added to the post.
Also see:

• How to Prevent your Blog from Leaking Pagerank
• Technorati FAQ – Counting Links
• Technorati FAQ – Blog Authority
• Technorati Wacks Blogrolling