The Blogroll

What is that? It's a group of links in the right or left columns of your blog, with links to other blogs. Why would you want one? Well, for several reasons. It makes your blog more noticeable to search engines for one thing.

You can use your blogrolls to connect to blogs that offer your readers added content that might interest them. My links would probably embellish on the theme of blog book tours. I also have a blogroll for members of the current blog challenge, and use these links list to visit the blogs. This is part of what we call "cyber-schmoozing" and it's a good thing to do in preparation for your own blog book tour down the road.

Finally, it's a good idea to have a separate blogroll of your favorite blogs that you think might make good hosts for your future tour. Scoping out those blogs takes a lot of time, so it's best to do a little work each day. It's so much easier to look at your own list of favorite blogs, and then invite those friends to host you, than to be left scrambling just weeks before your blog book tour is scheduled to begin.

Here's a starting point for you thanks to My Friend Amy's Blog - a list of book review blogs, lots of them. Click on the button at right, and then explore a few of them every day. Add your favorites to a blogroll on your site. It won't take any time to accumulate a list of fabulous blogs to host you. We'll also cover other techniques for finding great and unusual blogs at a later time.

How do you go about finding blog hosts for a tour? Leave us a comment.