A webring (web-ring) reffers to a circular structure of websites that are connected together similar to a ring, just like the name suggests. It is considered a form of SEO, and it is very useful for web advertising. It first started in 1994 as EUROP and now it is a structure that can increase your number of visitors.
Every website can have a navigation bar that allows the surfer to pass from one blog to another, for instance, after which they will return to the site they left from. This is the ring effect, coming to the starting point.
By using webrings, site owners choose to do so because they want to promote certain types of information or services. Initially if one site owner from the webring went offline, the webring breaks, but nowadays webmasters got the chance to improve the updates for webrings so they are not dependent of offline sites anymore.
There are very few minor providers that offer their webring services, and some concludent examples of these sort of services are RingLink or RingMaker.
Some people see webrings as a form of social networking with a purpose that has mutual benefits : bloggers can share ideas and information just like people do nowadays. The first webring appeared in the year 1998, and are now commonly met among bloggers especially. The sites that gather links to each other in these sort of webrings are usually categorized on certain themes that allow them to connect with others that write articles on the same topic or share the same ideas with them. The main themes can be related to education, religion, health, beauty, politics or everyday life.
Webrings are a great way to promote websites regardless of their topic and behind each webring there is a ring owner or also called a RingMaster, taking care of its maintainance and carefully selects which sites can be part of a specific webring, according to the category they apply for. Moreover, a good feature is that you can be part of more than one webring in the same time. For instance, if your blog is both related to family issues and health care, you can easily be part of a webring that deals with health and another one that deals with family problems.
Some of the advantages that you have when you`re part of a webring can consist in the fact that your site will be easier to find, the information presented on your site will be clearly indexed, you can “travel” from your site to another one in the same community, so you can see other people`s opinion towards a theme.
Therefore, exchanging links between the site owners that deal with the same themes can be easily made.
These ways to link sites between them can also help somebody that is looking for a particular piece of information and in the case when the surfer didn`t find what he was looking for on a site, he can use the navigation bar (nav-bar) and reach another site that deals with similar issues, improving the chances of succeedeing in finding something.