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Big bad ‘Blogroll.’ You’ve seen this showing up on a default wordpress installation. Even after you pick a nice theme, there it is: Blogroll.

Doesn’t it sound like some kind of deli sandwich with a horrid meat called ‘Blogony?’

In many cases, looking so bloggish with a Blogroll doesn’t further your goals.

But fixing this up, to change a weakness to a strength … That’s easy. Here’s how …

HOW TO GET RID OF THE BLOGROLL ITEM ON A WORDPRESS THEME

Simple.

First, hopefully you’re using a Wordpage theme that is ‘widget ready.’ If not, consider getting another theme, because widget-ready themes are much faster to work with, and they often eliminate the need to edit the theme in the theme editor, which can get your hands all dirty with htmls and phps and css stuff.

So, assuming that your theme is widget-ready, then in the wordpress admin page, under Design | Widgets, add a widget or two.

What widgets? Well, we like text widgets. Or rather, we *love* text widgets!

Here are some of the things you can do with text widgets …

ADSENSE CODE

Use a text Widget in the sidebar with adsense code pasted in. It might make you some adsense revenue. But this sometimes contributes to the look you want to have; and sometimes not.

I’d say it *contributes* to the desired appearance on this musical instrument comparison site for people who are thinking to Buy a Chapman Stick (or perhaps the alternative instrument).

I’d say it *would not* contribute to the desired appearance on this musical instrument presentation site about a specialty instrument used for the Two-Handed Tapping Music Technique.

POSITIONING STATEMENT

Another use for the text Widget in the sidebar is to paste in ‘positioning statement.’

Examples:

(1) from an Internet Marketing website — “About Voltos Industries: Voltos Industries manufactures a unique musical instrument called the Mobius Megatar, a type of electric guitar which is played by merely touching the strings to the frets, making two-handed touchstyle play possible …”

or

(2) from a Play Guitar with Two-Handed Tapping Technique website — “World Home of Two-Handed Tapping: All styles of tapping — guitar tapping, tapping on bass, Chapman Stick techniques, and the Easy Touch-Style Method. This site is for all.”

And does this give you a quick and easy way to wander through your keywords? You bet!

The humans see something that looks *unlike* many commercial sites, and the information also orients the humans. Up near the top of the site, the positioning statement tells what the site is about.

And the web search engines see keyworded text that helps them know what your page is about, and therefore when to serve it up to searchers.

Helps the humans. Furthers your goals. Helps the Search Engines. The search engines help you. All good.

PUT ‘BLOGROLL’ TO WORK TO BECOME USEFUL

A blogroll of course is a (a) stupid-sounding name for a set of (b) links that are worthless for your purposes.
Both those things can be changed.

(a) In wordpress admin panel, go to Manage | Link Categories and there you will see a category of links called ‘Blogroll’. Click on it and change it to say “Other wondrous Sites” or words that would be good for you.

(b) In wordpress admin panel, go to Manage | Links. Wipe out the default links, and put links in to some of your other sites (for google juice toward those sites) or to some biggie important sites whose rep won’t change relative to you because they got a couple more links. This makes you look honest and fair, to Google. And Google is your friend.

Here’s an example from a How to Get a Girlfriend website — You’ll see the positioning at top of column, then further down, you’ll find a set of links and descriptions. This is the ‘Blogroll’, transformed into something useful. (This particular theme organizes the links by category; but many themes don’t.)

Now, note that this same or similar goal can be accomplished by wiping out the ‘blogroll’ appearing in the sidebar by putting some widgets into the sidebar, and then sticking this same content into a text widget. Using the text widget may be quicker or easier. (But depending on the theme, re-purposing the existing blogroll mechanism may provide you with quick and easy slick formatting, as on our example above.)

TEXT NAVIGATION WITH ANCHOR TEXT

Consider using a text widget in the sidebar for Text Navigation.

Usually this would go near the bottom of the sidebar rather than at the top, because frankly it’s for the search engines. Here’s why text navigation is a good idea, used correctly …

Wordpress blogs often require you to use very short word for the nav buttons. And a single short word is not very good, considered as anchor text.

When Google reads your site, wouldn’t you rather have Google know that such-a-page is about ‘low-cost flamdoodle model 3-B’ instead of having Google think that such-a-page is about ‘product’?

Frankly, Google needs all the help it can get. It’s going to go with the preponderance of words that it sees. That’s why keyword gurus are always talking about keyword density. Got to be a certain amount to rise above the ‘noise’ of the other words, so Google can ‘hear’ the keyword loud and clear.

One goood way you can clearly tell Google what each page is about is to tell Google in a way that Google is already programmed to use — the anchor text in links.

Google doesn’t *only* look at the anchor text in backlinks coming to your site from Slovenia. Google also looks at the anchor text of the links *on your own site* that point to the other pages on your site.

And good news! *You* have total control over the anchor text of pagelinks on your own site, if you’ll take time to (a) select a text widget, (b) put it near the bottom of the sidebar, (c) Title it ‘Text Navigation’, and (d) make links to all of your pages, using SEO-chosen anchor text in each link.

It’s cheap, it’s quick, it’s useful.

Here’s an example of Text Navigation used this way used on an Electronic Guitar Tuner website.

Google is your friend.

The wordpress text widget is your friend.

More traffic is your friend.

All friends here!