Get on Track with Trackbacks !!

     A great tool for all great (want to be Great) bloggers are TrackBacks.  If you didn't know, they automate the interlinking of blog posts. You understand blog comments and commenting, I'm sure.   That's easy, visit other good blogs and comment often to engage blogger conversation. You write a post on your blog. Someone reads it and thinks you’re either a genius or the devil and comments to you.   What if decide to leave a comment about your blog post on my BtG blog? That’s when TrackBacks work for you.   

If I read something pretty amazing on your blog and I write a post about it on my blog, “You should check this out, here’s a cool quote from it and here’s the link to the post.”  So I link to the post on your blog and publish.   You're likely unaware that your blog platform; WordPress or Movable Type or TypePad, checks all the links in a  each post every time a post is published. It finds the link to your post and then runs out to your blog and checks to see if your post is accepting TrackBacks. If so, my blog sends a little ping to your blog sort of saying, ‘Hey! Rob at BtG is talking about you on his blog.’ and your blog answers the ping and says ‘I’ll make a note of it’. Then your blog makes a note on the particular post that says, “Besides all these comments under this post, here’s another blogger talking about this post on their site, oh and here’s the link to it.”  This way, readers of your blog in addtion to  what the commenters are saying about it on your blog can alos see what other bloggers are saying about it!

The best thing is, you don’t have to know how TrackBacks work in order to use them.  You can simply set a post to receive trackbacks and set your blog to send them when you publish new posts. Your blog platform will do the work and email you when there are new TrackBacks.  Unfortunately, like with all good stuff on the internet, evil spammers got busy funneling their junk into automated TrackBacks pingbots that filled blogs with dumb messages about mortgages, online poker and medicines. Most comment spam blockers are now set to also scan TrackBacks to help stem the tide of spam TrackBacks.  One of the greatest parts about TrackBack is that it helps to increase your blog’s link levels and search engine ranking.  With the introduction of the ‘no follow’ attribute, links in comments and TrackBacks are usually often not included in the calculation of your blog’s Google PageRank.

To set up on your blog-

In Typepad- To engage TrackBacks by default, go to Weblogs > (Your Blog) > Configure > Preferences > Comment and TrackBack Preferences: Check the checkbox ‘Hold comments and TrackBacks for approval.’ And set Default TrackBack Status set to ‘New posts accept TrackBacks.’ (for receiving TrackBacks)

In Movable Type- To enable TrackBacks by default, go to (Your Blog) > Configuration > Preferences > Publicity/Remote Interfaces/TrackBack: Check the checkbox ‘Allow TrackBack Pings On by Default.’ (for sending TrackBacks) Check the checkbox ‘Email New TrackBack Pings.’ Check the checkbox ‘Enable TrackBack Auto-Discovery.’ (for receiving TrackBacks)

In WordPress- To enable TrackBacks by default,go to Options > Discussion: Check the checkbox ‘Attempt to notify any Weblogs linked to from the article.’ (for sending TrackBacks) Check the check box ‘Allow link notifications from other Weblogs. (for receiving TrackBacks)

That's it, now you know and TrackBacks and can use them.  Check to make sure your blog is set properly and get reading & commenting on other great blogs (like here).  Questions, comments?  Let us know.

Comments

[Frank Richard]

Great post, thanks for sharing!