Mar
Trackbacks, Pingbacks, Linkbacks - huh?
by admin
I had a couple of questions from Etta Rose in the comments of my last post. So I thought I would make a post of them as the answer is a little long for a comment 
Note this is targeted to Wordpress, but you should find similar functionality in other blogging applications, so here goes…
What is trackback?
As you roam the blogosphere you read some posts, you find one that inspires or angers you so much that you have to go to your blog and write a post about it. Naturally you will put a link to the original post somewhere in your post. From this point you have two ways of letting the original poster know about your post:
Sending A Pingback
Under Options > Discussion you will find a check box for "Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the article (slows down posting.)" and another for "Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and track-backs.)" - check the second one so that you know if other’s are writing about you.
If you check the first one then when you publish the post WordPress will go through your post looking for any external links. If it finds any it will send your link to the original blog.
Sending A Trackback
This will also need the second box to be checked and it involves a little more work. At the original post, scroll down to the comment area and just before the comment box you will find a trackback link. In Wordpress this is usually the post’s URL with /trackback/ appended to it. Anyway, right-click the link and copy it.
Then go to your post in edit mode, at the bottom you will find a Trackback box where you can now paste the trackback URL. If there is more than one you can separate them with a space. Then you can Publish the post. WordPress will then go through the list of track-backs, sending a quote from your post wrapped in a link to the original post where it appears in the comment area.
This enables a conversation to go on between the blogs with a possible cross-over of each blog’s visitors so both blogs benefit.
Main Differences
Pingback Trackback
Technology XML-RPC HTTP POST
How are they found auto-discovery Manual entry
Sends content No Yes
Format link link and a quote
If you are the lazy type the Pingback is a quick and dirty way of notifying other blogs, but the Trackback is superior because it sends part of your post to the other blog. This allows the author AND visitors to read a bit and then get tempted to go to your blog to read the full post where you have a better opportunity to get them to subscribe and become a regular visitor.
How Do I Get Back-links?
First of all a back-link is a link from, for example, a blog to your blog. Google loves back-links, they are the backbone of PR. The back-links can be gotten from:
- Posts: A blogger writes about another blogger’s post or reviews a blog.
- Blogrolls: Another blogger puts a link to your blog in their blogroll.
- Comments: You write a comment on another blog.
- Plugins: Plugins like Top Commentator will have a link to other’s blogs.
Posts And Blogrolls
For Posts and Blogrolls there are three ways you can get that back-link.
The first is by the random generosity of other bloggers. Some bloggers will add other bloggers to the blogroll because they either like or aspire to become like the linked blogger. Some bloggers will write link-love posts, usually on a regular basis, others will write a review of someones blog.
The second method is by reciprocal linking either on the Blogroll or via posts. This involves work on your part. You have to find blogs that are similar to yours and network with the owners by:
- Writing a post that includes them.
- Stumble their posts.
- Comment frequently on their blog.
- Be a sponsor in their competition.
I think you get the idea, before you ask or get, GIVE, and it shall come back to you much like karma 
Since I got a PR3 I’ve had a number of requests for either a link or a reciprocal link, they have all gone directly to the bin as I know none of them from Adam.
Once you have appeared on their radar then you can ask/suggest a link trade. The best kind of back-link is one that is in context, in other words not just a link like on a Blogroll, but one that is in a post, I call this Deep linking, that post was about comments but the principal is the same for posts. Also if your link is in a post it will probably be there for ever, if it’s on a Blogroll, it could disappear when the theme is changed.
The third way is by buying links. This use to work, but Google now takes a stern view of paid links both in giving and receiving them. Lots of site lost some or all of their PR last December when Google did a PageRank update. However, there are Google-friendly ways of buying links. One such method is via Scratchback. You tip a site with a minimal amount of cash and you get a link to your site with whatever text you want.
Comments
Comments require that you go out and read posts and then write comments in response to them. There is a certain behavior that is expected.
- Do not spam a blog with your comments.
- Do not just type "Nice post" or similar, try to add to the conversation. Sometimes I find the comments take on a life of their own and are more interesting than the post.
- You do not need to add a link to your site as a signature, by making a comment you automatically get a link.
Personally I don’t worry about the blog’s PR, if it’s a decent blog it will get PR in time. Much like this blog had zero PR, people commented here and now they have PR3 back-links. I’m also not that worried if the blog is nofollow or dofollow, Google still sees both kinds of back-link so why worry?
Plugins
This type are usually fleeting as they are normally updated once a month. So in the case of the Top Commentator, for it to be useful as a back-link source you would have to consistently comment at a particular blog AND be one of the top commentators so that you stay in the list. On some low traffic blogs this might be manageable, but seriously, it’s too much like work for such little return.
A note for PR chasers
Back-links alone are not sufficient to get PR, your posts should be interlinked as well. Ways of doing this:
- Have a human readable Site map.*
- Have Category Pages.
- Have Tag Pages.
- Show a list of your recent posts.*
- Show a list of your popular posts.*
- At the foot of each post show a list of related posts.*
- Refer to other posts from within your posts.
For those that I have starred, there are plugins readily available to do the job, most of which I mentioned in the theme series.
Tags: back-link, blog, comments, Google, pingback, posts, trackback
Category Blogging, wordpress |
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Great tips! I didn’t realize how valuable deeplinks and category/tag links are. We have something like 90 categories - I think I’ll set up some links to the most used ones only!
Colin,
This is a GREAT post. Not to say your others are not GREAT, but this is GREAT on another level.
Very useful collection of tips and why’s and for’s. Not just a ‘do this’ but a ‘why as well.
Need to re-read it for maximum absorbtion.
I see this ‘related posts’ over the place now and it looks good. But I don’t have that many ‘recent’ ‘decent’ posts that are ‘related’, am working on building up my collection.
I have space under my main feature post, that could be useful to put some of the post related plug-ins etc.
I didn’t know about a Tag page, is this a unique WP page just full of tages? LIke I have a Site Map?
Anyway, I Have many more questions, but see if I can work on them myself.
Great post,
Colin, a bit off subject here, but I do get back on track towards the end, and it’s kind of relevant to links in general. So if you can bear with me…
Not sure how much you follow things like twitter, friend feed, pownce, facebook, tumblr but FRIEND FEED is simple awesome. ALong with the BETA of PING.fm, I can now post via ping.fm to all my ‘lifestream’ app’s.
By the way… Ping.fm, is in BETA. But it is simply awesome. It simply allows you to post from Ping to Twitter, Pownce, FriendFeed, Tumblr etc from one interface. So even if you are not active on Pownce for example, you are allowing people who do use Pownce to still follow you. Which i think is quite thoughtful.
If you check out my friendfeed or any of the individual feed’s you will see that I am using them to post about good posts that I see. So as well as stumbling etc, anyone that follows me we now see my recommendations.
Don’t want a medal for it frankly, but thought you might be interested. I have really taken all this on board and it offers so much potential. It is amazing how many genuine people asking ‘want’ to follow you and ask you to be a contact (not just because they have agreat blog).
Doing a post on all this next week, what I have learnt and how I arrange it all.
But have spread the word about this post you have knocked together.
One point I would like to ask, the fact that ‘this post link’ is now all over the place: twitter, fF, FB etc, does this help with google, or are they not included in the whole Google mission?
OK, about Tag Clouds. Do these actually benefit you in terms of google etc? I have always resisted them because they take up so much room, but I see you have it only on your sitemap page?
Would you recommend doing this? What are the advantages?
Also, sorry about these individual posts but am on a mission this morning.
Can you recommend a plugin for similar posts? I have looked at several this morning, installed and checked out. But they add it to the sidebar.
IDeally I would like them to show after the post itself, which I think is far more appropriate. Can you suggest any methods that allows you to hook the ’similar posts’ directly underneath the current viewing post?
Am sure I could research it, but it does no harm to ask as you may have the answer already to hand.
Thanks Colin,
Well, I was right, there really is no such thing as a stupid question. You put a lot of effort in answering my question and I really appreciate that. You have opened my eyes to what a back link is and I feel good about all the links to me fave bloggers I put in some of my posts. I have never asked anyone for a link. I feel like if someone enjoys what I have written they will on their own. Just as I have never asked for a stumble or anything. I want it to be because I wrote a funny post. Colin, you are THE MAN!!!
@Etta: No problem it was fun. I am the same regarding submissions, I will sometimes promote my posts at BloggingZoom but that’s it. I feel if a post is worthwhile people will SU, Digg or whatever. If they don’t then it doesn’t happen. It’s the same with backlinks, I have yet to ask for one for the same reason.
@Erica: Yeah… deeplinking is the way to go, like in this post I referenced two older articles. This is relatively easy when the blog is focused on a topic. At the 5B site you could link all the wedding stuff together for example.
@Graham:
Related Posts:
I use Yet Another Related Posts Plugin - There are others but this one returns a list of the related entries based on keyword matches and you can tell it how many.
If you decide to use it, in it’s Option Panel change the “Before / after related entries” to <div>Related posts:<ol> and </ol></div> so that it will validate.
Tag Cloud:
I use it everywhere except the single post pages. I created a Tag Template page, similar to the regular Archive page. It doesn’t do anything for Google, in fact it can work against you like the Category and Archive pages if you do not noindex them. I look at Categories as Chapter headings of the blog and Tags as the index so a visitor can do a broad search in the Cats or be more specific in the Tags.
Social Stuff:
I’m not really a social animal in RL, let alone virtually. It’s enough for me to drag my ass to the forums on EC, even there I stay away from the touchy-feely stuff. I signed up for facebook almost a year ago and didn’t get into it. I think I’ll wait for your post and see what you have to say - convince me
BTW thx for the SU
Today has been quite stormy, the “kill them with kindness” post has resurfaced and my last two posts are all battling for supremacy today on SU 
@Graham: I just had a Google Alert and it showed:
“Jaiku | Colin at CK Marketing has a great post on ‘Trackbacks …” from you. So Google does see them, but I have never noticed them in thye list of links…
I reading this post, I noticed a link to your post on deep linking. I never thought of linking to an individual post instead of the home page of my site. I learned something new. Thank you.
Well that has opened my eyes totally to the world of trackbacks and the like. I had no idea that everything was so quid pro quo. Thanks for this really helpful post. Which I will now re-read three times - I’m not terribly techie and have to work it out word for word!
man…sure it changed the look that i had for blogging’…u are a blogging guru to ome!
Ha.. that was neatly explained… blogger sites are poor when the aspect of track back and pinging is considered
@Marty: With the deep linking just make sure you spread the links amongst the posts and the homepage.
@Jean: If you have any queries let me know.
@Scorilo: Blogging guru! Nah… I’ve only been doing this since October
@Vishnu: Yeah… Blogger leaves a lot to be desired, but it has it’s uses.
Linkbacks, Trackbacks and Pingbacks - what are they?…
As a newbie to the world of blogging I did not understand many of the new terms presented to me. The other day while searching for something totally unrelated I came across an article that clearly explained what trackbacks, pingbacks and linkbacks we…
I think this post is great. I think that everyone assumes that everyone knows about this kind of thing. People that are just starting out and some that are not need this kind of information. Thanks for the info
Nice Post I learn a lot. I think I will came back here more. And learn some more trick
great posts…i’ve been doing most of the stuff you taught here but my pr is still zero but i also read a post that a PR is updated every 3 months so that makes me not worry about my current PR. I just have one question though, you said that you already get a backlink when you do comments, I think it is true with wordpress but is it also true with blogger account? Because I noticed that it is only linked to the commentors profile in blogger. And the Name/URL option can be turned off by the moderator of the blog.
@Carol: Yeah… It’s not as if we are born with the knowledge
When I started blogging, and even now, I had to hunt around for stuff. Then there’s stuff that that we don’t know that we should know. I’m trying to fill in those blanks here. So, if you have any specific questions… give me a shout.
@James: Why not subscribe, and you won’t miss anything
@Pamps: As this is a Wordpress blog, I tend to speak Wordpress. I know there are other blog platforms but I haven’t the time to investigate the differences, sorry. Commenting on Blogger blogs seems to be different everytime. Sometimes I can give only a username, other times an email address and others a URL. It’s such a pain, I rarely comment on a blogger blog unless I really feel I must.
Another awesome post, finally simple explanations! 2 questions:
1. Why would I have 2 trackback links to one post?
2. If you trackback a post and link to the originator within the post, they will receive a trackback and pingback, yes?
@Dennis: 1> A post can have many trackbacks, they will be from different posts.
2> I would assume so, yes. Though I seem to remember reading somewhere that the receiving WP blog would ignore the ping, maybe we should test that out
Come to think of it you may be right. I have followed a few trackbacks, and the post will inevitably start with something like “My friend Dennis wrote…” linked also to my blog and I don’t recall ever getting a ping notice for it.