SERP Insight Blogroll: It Does Not Exist

Short answer: a blogroll link is a sitewide link in a blog’s sidebar or footer list, historically a list of blogs the author actually read. Because it appears on every page of the site and sits outside any article’s content, it is one of the clearest paid-link patterns a search engine can detect — and one of the least valuable placements available today.

What a blogroll originally was

In the early blogging era, a blogroll was a genuine recommendation list: the blogs an author read and wanted to point readers toward. It carried real editorial meaning because it cost the author something to include you — sidebar space and their own credibility.

That meaning is what made it valuable to search engines, and that value is what caused it to be sold, which is what destroyed the meaning. Blogroll link selling was widespread enough by the early 2010s that the format became a liability rather than an asset.

Why sitewide links are the weakest placement

The problem is structural, not a matter of quality.

Three specific problems compound:

• No context. A template slot has no surrounding sentences, so nothing tells a search engine what the link is about beyond the anchor text itself.
• Perfect repetition. The identical link and anchor on every URL of a site is a signature no organic linking behaviour produces.
• Company you cannot choose. Blogroll and footer lists accumulate. Your link sits beside whoever else bought a slot, in whatever industry, and you have no say.

Blogroll links vs footer links

These get conflated, including in articles about this vendor. They are adjacent but not identical.

For ranking purposes the distinction barely matters — both are sitewide, non-editorial, and both should carry rel="sponsored" if paid for. It matters for accuracy: if you go looking for a blogroll product at this vendor, you will not find one.

When a sitewide link is legitimate

Sitewide links are not inherently bad. They are normal and expected in several cases:

• Your own properties. Linking your main site from a microsite you own is ordinary navigation.
• Genuine partnerships and memberships, where the relationship is real and disclosed.
• Platform credits — “site by X”, “powered by Y” — provided they are not stuffed with commercial anchors.
• Actual recommendation lists, where an author genuinely curates.

What makes a sitewide link a problem is not the position. It is payment plus a commercial anchor plus no disclosure. Remove any one of those and the picture changes.

What to do instead

If a vendor is offering you sitewide placements — blogroll, footer or sidebar — the value is close to zero and the pattern is the most visible one in link building. The same budget spent on a contextual placement inside a genuinely relevant, genuinely trafficked page will do more, and the same budget spent on something worth citing will do more again.

The practical order: check whether your own internal linking points at the pages you want to rank (free, fully under your control, and usually neglected); then look at contextual placements on pages that actually get traffic; then consider what you could publish that a writer would need to reference.

If you are evaluating publishers, our directory lists metrics with their source labelled so you can judge them yourself, and the homepage guide covers the link attributes — sponsored, nofollow, ugc — and when each applies.