What the heck is a “trackback”? That’s the million dollar question I kept asking myself as I watched Traffic Secrets 2.0 by John Reese. For a nice little definition, I turn to Wikipedia:

A Trackback is one of three types of Linkbacks, methods for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking, and so referring, to their articles. Some weblog software programs, such as Wordpress, Movable Type, Typo and Community Server, support automatic pingbacks where all the links in a published article can be pinged when the article is published. The term is used colloquially for any kind of Linkback.

Understand Now? Trackbacks are often overlooked by bloggers who focus more on looking at the number of people who are actually commenting on their blog. But what about the people who are reading the blogs and then posting their own blogs in response to something that someone else wrote? This is where trackbacks are most useful.

How Trackbacks Work

If you are out reading someone’s blog post and you really like it and want to mention it in your own blog, click on the title of the individual blog post. You will then see the page refresh with nothing else but that blog post on it. Go to the top of the page, highlight the URL and copy the link (aka: permalink). You will then want to go back to your own blog and paste the link into whatever it is you’re writing. So, for example,

The other day, I was reading this really funny post from my friend Sean Fallon of Gizmodo…

In the wonderful world of blogging, whenever you end up “publishing” your blog post with the link in it, it will automatically send a “ping” so whoever you linked to to leave her a message that you did a trackback to them. Some blogging software doesn’t do the trackbacks right away. You may have to read the directions and/or contact the blog author to set it up.

If you are using Wordpress and are linking to other bloggers who are using Wordpress as well, trackbacks are sent out automatically in the form of pingbacks.

Each blog is different, so make sure you read all of the directions for how to set up and use trackbacks. They can be a great tool for increasing search optimization for websites and blogs!

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