If you are interested in contacting me for a link exchange with your website, I regret that I must decline.  This is for two reasons.

First, I get too many requests for links to honor them all.  I have purposely designed the site to have a fixed size blogroll and there is simply not enough room. I would have pages of links if I accepted them all.

Second, I believe that an endless blogroll provides little or no value to readers.  One of the most powerful purposes of a blogroll is to point readers to sites that the author feels are of high quality and personally recommends.  Link exchanges totally undermine that.  I want my blogroll to represent my personal blog recommendations.  Those should be the blogs that I myself read and that I recommend you read, as well.

It’s difficult to say no to link exchanges because when I started Life in the Rough, I asked for exchanges myself, and some excellent golf blogs linked to me.  That was considered the path to growth at the time. I’m grateful for that, but I really do believe that times have changed.  Many times, bloggers are simply looking for increased Google PageRank, but I’m of the belief that Google is smart enough to account for links that were blindly exchanged, as opposed to those that appear organically in content.

If you would like me to consider your site for inclusion in my blogroll, I’m happy to do so.  And if you believe Life in the Rough is worthy of your blogroll, I’m honored to be there.  However, I cannot reciprocate simply because of that.

Good content will ensure that your blog grows.  Not blogroll links.  Other bloggers will take note.  Word will spread through Twitter and other social networking. People will link to your posts in theirs.  Some may invite you for guest posts.

This was a difficult decision and I thank you for understanding.