Blogroll Links?

I noticed a lot of my competitors have links on blogrolls. They are relevant websites but are these still good to use after Penguin? Or is it only bad if MY website has sitewide links?

Great question newyorkcity,

In a word, yes, they are still ok to use however you will want to be careful. Some sites exchange links with one another to put on each other's blog roles. If Google sees that you are doing this, you may be penalized. Having far too many links on one page is still not a good thing, especially if they are not relevant to content on your page. I would use them but use them sparingly and not as a link exchange tactic. As a best practice, if you have a blog you want to link to, do it in a post when writing about something relevant to that blog.

Check out this thread from BHW on the subject,

http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...enguin-panda-blog-rolls-good-bad-ranking.html

This post considers some of the more practical questions for having or not having blog rolls,

https://www.uppsite.com/2012/07/blogrolling-5-reasons-its-great-and-5-questions-to-consider/

Hope this helps,

Shawn

From my own personal experience, blog roll links do still work, but they aren't anywhere near as powerful as in post contextual links. Don't go overboard by having blogroll links in 2389238932893 crappy blogs either, as that just looks un-natural.

The blogroll links are all relevant websites, would reaching out to 20 be to much? these are all pretty big websites all being PR3-PR6

20 is way too much, 6 is max I would say.

20 seems like a good number because chances a lot will say no or just no respond. But if you know for sure or you're friends with some bloggers I'd say about 8 is pretty good.