The WashingtonPost.com, under the direction of Jeff Burkett, is offering an interesting blog link ad unit on its homepage by rolling out Blogroll. Jeff talks about the Blogroll program on his blog.
Blogroll offers bloggers an opportunity to have their blog linked to on the WashingtonPost.com homepage without offering a nofollow attribute. This means that sites that are linked to should see search engine optimization benefits. According to coverage on TechCrunch:
"The advertising system seems most like Blogads, where blogs are grouped by topic and advertisers can purchase space on the blogs in bulk. The revenue split appears to be 50/50."
As a blogger this could be an extremely attractive offering. However, some search engine companies many not like the fact WPost.com is basically participating in link swapping operation. Barry Schwartz explains in more detail here.
Interestingly, I shared a limo ride and a conversation with Jeff Burkett a few months ago on the way to Laguardia airport following a conference in New York. Jeff explained how he had started his blog Media Landscaping and he was urging his staff get involved. Citing Somewhat Frank as an example, I explained how blogging is a great educational tool. He agreed and explained how he was pushing his team to really embrace blogging so that they could better understand the industry landscape they are doing sales in. I am happy to see his blog is still going strong and his team at WashingtonPost.com is trying some new blog related ideas out. It would appear the blogging experience is paying off.
