Blog Q&A: TrackBacks

Q:  How do you use TrackBacks and leverage them for growing blog visibility?

A:  Let's say you are on somebody's blog and you've read something that really strikes you as important, valid, something that your blog readers need to know about. So you want to write about it on your own blog.

Now on their blog post, most blogging software has a link that says TrackBack, underneath  in the footer area. If there is a link that says TrackBack, you click on that link on the person's post that you are reading and you want to refer to.

You click on the TrackBack link and then you should see a URL that says TrackBack URL. You would want to copy that. Then when you are writing your own blog post on your own blog, there should be a field in your compose area, that says "Send a TrackBack to these addresses."

You'll paste the TrackBack URL you copied from the other blog into that field.

Then, what happens is when you publish your post, the blogging software does something called ping, and it pings the other blog that you have written about it... and what will show up on their blog, associated with the post that you are pinging, are the first couple of sentences, the first forty words, of what you wrote, with a link back to your blog.

This increases your visibility in the blogosphere because the author of the blog you trackbacked to now knows you exist as well as anyone else who reads that blog's post.  Chances are, if your post is provocative enough, others will click through to check out your blog.

This is covered in the Build A Better Blog ebook (Page 67).

Comments

[Pamela Stewart]

Hi Patsi and Denise:

I just want to validate what you said with my own experience. The other day I included a trackback to a post on a really good blog. I was astounded to see that in about 2 days, I got about 50 referred visitors to my blog from that link. As long as you create a post that adds value as a trackback, it is a great strategy for increasing your visibility.

[Rosie]

I thank you for your comment.