I started webbing in about 1996 or so. I loved it then as much as I do now. I had a Geocities homepage and I joined a bunch of webrings I never really took full advantage of. Possibly that was because I had no concept of the value of backlinks. It is a lot like play if you do it right. Once you get beyond the rhetoric, it’s really about 70% game in this business anyway. I do remember back then though people would trade links and I had quite a few sites linking to my pathetic HTML mistake-ridden website.

Well, many years have passed now and I find myself seeking those precious backlinks more than I ever did then (though then I think I probably effortlessly had more). I wanted to just remind my blogging readers that there is a lot of value in including your blogroll favorites within the body of your posts. For example, I have a set of my 9 top backlink bloggers on my blogroll embedded in this post. While it is probably more ethical for the readers of the world to link them in a context that makes better sense, I put them here to make a point and show how simple it can be to do it. I save my top readers and linkers in a text file and when I sit down to blog, I make sure to link out to them. I think it’s an exciting way to get the old networking magic of 1999 back. What do you think?