Prompted by Jason, NT7S's latest post in his thoughtful blog "Ripples in the Ether", I have finally got round to adding a blogroll to this blog. In case you don't know, a blogroll is just a jargon word for a list of links to other blogs that a blogger thinks are worth reading. As Jason points out, networking ham radio blogs together in this way brings in more visitors and increases the readership, because if people like your blog they think that they will probably like other blogs you like too. Most of the blogs I now read regularly I first found using the blogrolls on other sites.

Adding a blogroll should be easy, and probably is if you host your blog on Blogger's site. But I'm obstinately still having Blogger create and upload static HTML pages to my g4ilo.com web server, in the belief that this will improve the SEO (search engine optimization) of my entire site.

Whether it really does or not is anyone's guess. Search engine optimization is supposedly a science - though actually a black art - that is intended to get your site listed nearer the top of the first search engine results page so you get more visitors.

There are loads of "experts" who will give you all sorts of advice as to how to improve a website's SEO. However, in my opinion there are three things that a website must have to have to get lots of visitors:

• It has to have been in existence for a while - the longer the better.
• It needs to have lots of good content containing the phrases that the people you want to come visit will be searching for (like "QRP" or "stealth radio".)
• It needs to have lots of incoming links from other good, related sites.

There isn't a lot you can do about the first one if you're just starting your site. But since a blog contains a lot of content it's obviously a good thing to have, and since blogrolls are links to sites they are a good thing too, because if you link to other people's blogs they'll probably link back to you.

Labels: Website