Blogroll — As you can see, my blogroll is very long. At this point, I’m more interested in trimming it than adding to it. On occasion, I surf through the roll, deleting blogs that haven’t been updated in the past month and replacing them with new ones. As I’m very busy these days, I don’t do this as often as I’d like.
If you’ve sent requests for reciprocal links and haven’t received one, don’t take offense. Sometimes I don’t want to link to the blog for various reasons; other times I add the link or intend to add it, but don’t get around to it. That’s the way the blogosphere works sometimes. Fortunately, nobody is obliged to link to anybody, although it’s considered good etiquette to link to a blog you’ve referenced in a post.
Posts — I get a lot of link requests. I send them out myself. High-profile bloggers send link requests to each other. What I call “chasing the link” is a normal part of blogging; however, very rarely do I link to posts that aren’t related to something I’ve blogged about in the past 48 hours at most, and I rarely link to posts about topics that don’t interest me.
How to get a link from me:
1) Trackback: The absolute best way to get a link from me is to trackback to a post. There’s no guarantee I’ll link to you, but I frequently check comments and trackbacks during the day. Most of the time, I follow trackbacks and read the posts.
If you don’t know how to trackback and you want other bloggers to link to you, learn how to send trackbacks.
There’s a brief “how to” in my Trackback Policy. Tutorials for bloggers:
- WordPress: Definition of Trackbacks
- WordPress: Introduction to Blogging
- Unfortunately, the WordPress Codex doesn’t have a basic, step by step tutorial on sending trackbacks, but this brief trackback tutorial may be helpful no matter which platform you use. You can also enable your WP blog to send a “ping” to other blogs automatically.
- Movable Type
- Blogger.com w/o Haloscan (You can’t send trackbacks with Blogger.com, but you can receive them as backlinks.)
- Blogger.com or other platforms with Haloscan
- Simpletracks — If all else fails, or you use Blogger.com comments only, use this free tool to send trackbacks.
The trackback is a great feature that benefits all bloggers. Learn to use it, and use it often.
2) Related posts: Send a link to a post that’s related to a topic I’ve covered in the past 24 hours. It helps to include an excerpt of the post, and a friendly greeting wouldn’t hurt. On principle, I won’t even read a post sent by someone who doesn’t address me in the e-mail or an e-mail that contains only a link. And I don’t like group e-mail link requests. If you can’t take the time to send individual e-mails, I don’t have the time to read your post.
I’m more inclined to link to bloggers who put in the effort to write something of substance. I’m inclined not to link to a one-sentence or short paragraph post that merely expresses agreement or disagreement with one of mine.
3) Comment: I’m inclined to link to bloggers who participate in the comment threads and who agree with me. I’m biased that way. 
4) Round-ups: I used to ask bloggers to send links (more often than I do now), but I’ve had to cut back on this practice. As I plan to do more writing outside the blog, however, I may occasionally ask readers for quotes or other information or to send links for a round-up post.
These aren’t hard and fast rules. If I think your post would interest readers and/or inspires me to blog about something, I will link.
