Links – The More the Better

Improving web positioning is a constant challenge to companies using the Internet to do business. One way to improve your standings with the search engines is to have as many sites link into yours as possible and having a regular blog is a great tool to enable this as it gives people a valuable reason to link back to your site.

The two most utilised means to facilitate linkbacks to your website or blog are trackbacks and pingbacks.

Trackbacks allow you to track sites that refer back to your site. You’ll find them listed at the end of a post next to comments. Trackbacks are very useful for users as they allow interested readers follow the thread of a blog topic through different blog articles. For a great pictorial explanation of trackbacks see Plastic Bag – its an old post but still relevant. The downside to trackbacks is that they tend to attract spam because the links aren’t authenticated.

Pingbacks also allow you to track links to your page but unlike trackbacks, these are not displayed on the blog page so users can’t click through to other posts. Instead, you receive notification within your blog engine that another site has linked in. Pingbacks are more simple to set up than trackbacks (many blog engines automatically track pingbacks) and they attract less spam because the links are verified.

There’s something very narcissistic about trackbacks – they are the ultimate way to blow your blog horn but beware the less trafficked site; trackbacks will only draw attention to your limited audience. Pingbacks on the other hand are more subtle but still achieve the ultimate objective of attracting links back to your site and what are blog search engines for other than tracking blog threads anyway? Seems with all the spam and hassle getting set up, trackbacks may be more nuisance than they’re worth.