Copyright © Kerry Johnson

If you are a small business owner, blogs can be really helpful for you. If you have a blog, you probably have 2 important things to consider finding/writing quality content to post to your blog and getting quality links to your blog. If you own a blog and would like to advocate “dofollow” for trackback and pingback, you can install “dofollow” Trackbacks Plug-ins.

It’s been almost a year since I started blogging and only recently, I realized the importance of usefulness of trackbacks and pingbacks to get some great traffic to your blog, website, and social network. This post is about the use of pingback/trackback to get more links and contents for your blog.

So what is pingback and trackback?

The pingback system is a way for a blog to be automatically notified when other blogs link to it. It is a method for web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. For example, using pingback, Bob’s software can automatically notify Alice that her post has been linked to, and Alice’s software can then include this information on her site.

Trackbacks must be done manually by entering the trackback URL that the trackback should be sent to. It requires both sites to be trackback-enabled in order to establish this communication. Trackback does not require the originating site to be physically linked to the receiving site.

Trackbacks are used primarily to facilitate communication between blogs; if a blogger writes a new entry commenting on, or referring to, an entry found at another blog, and both blogging tools support the trackback protocol, then the commenting blogger can notify the other blog with a "trackback ping"; the receiving blog will typically display summaries of, and links to, all the commenting entries below the original entry.

Both systems are susceptible to spamming. Some individuals or companies have abused the trackback feature to insert spam links on some blogs. Pingback spam is where people abuse the pingback system to get free links back (and subsequently traffic) to their site.

How to know if a blog allows trackback and pingback?

They are either in the comments section or a section on its own. Wordpress blog, by default, has “Nofollow” trackback/pingback link.

How will I know if a blog is using “do follow” or “nofollow?”

Check out the blog and see if there’s any trackback or pingback links. They are either in the comments section or a section on its own. Wordpress blog, by default, has “nofollow” trackback/pingback link.

If you have any difficulty with pingback or trackback, refer to this excellent post.

Trackbacks and pingbacks are tools to help readers follow the flow of interactive content. They’re methods for letting a web author know that you've linked to their document, it is common for blog entries to be interlinked.

Trackbacks and pingbacks are two Wordpress supported protocols for automated communications/notifications between blogs and both are open invitations to spam. Finally, they’re almost identical except that pingbacks are automatically "pinged" when you put a link in your blog.

Kerry Johnson is site owner of Online Business Opportunities and ideas. Get his free downloadable book Co-op Marketing the business model for the 21st century.