When you first start your movie website, a blogroll is a good way to get your website’s name out there (especially if the website your link is appearing on has a Page Rank higher than you do. Google sees that a sign of approval. Use your website’s name as the Anchor Text for the link back to your website) but there are other, simpler methods to do the same. You can just email the website directly. Most websites have a contact tab or a contact email address published somewhere. You can use that to introduce yourself to them. Most, if not all, will come to your website to give it a once over, which equals page views, which equals traffic. You can also post comments on popular movie websites but place the title for your website in the Name slot instead of your name. It’s free advertising for your movie website when the comment is published and good Anchor Text usage at the same time.
As I alluded to with my Google digression above, linking to other websites on your front page and getting reciprocation from those linked-to websites is great for your Technorati rating but do you really want to be sending off your websites’ traffic once they have gotten there? Your answer to this question should be: “No, I do not.” You probably spent many hours on Search Engine Optimization for your website to get organic traffic to come to your website. With a blogroll, you are letting others benefit from your all of your SEO efforts. Consider this also: the websites you are linking to may have a higher end (a more professional, high-tech) website than you do with better content. Do you really want your website visitors going there? What would be the point of coming to your website then?
One solution is have a page on your website where you house links to other analogous websites like this one. The most obvious solution, however, is not to link to other websites that you do not own or benefit from at all. There are ten or thousands of movie websites on the internet. Do not let your competition be found through your movie website, especially if you are trying to make money, because most-likely they are too.
