Hey guys, sorry I couldn’t post yesterday. Today I am though.

One of the most effective and underused tools in blogging is the simple trackback. What is a trackback you say? A trackback is something which I can’t explain in a few words. I can only tell you what it does. When you link to someone’s post in your post, your blog software pings that person’s blog. It then leaves an excerpt of the link to that person’s blog, and the text around it.

So, why are they effective? Trackbacks can alert readers of other blogs to your article. They may see something they find interesting. They’ll click on the trackback and then come to you. Read my post on stickifying your blog to keep the readers there.

So, how do you send a trackback? Well, you can link to an individual post (as far as I know, it won’t work if you link to their home page). Wordpress has a special feature as well. While you are writing a post, scroll down to the bottom, and there should be a collapsible bar, which says trackbacks. Click the plus sign, and it should open. Then, type the address of the post you would like to send your post to. It has to have /trackback/ at the end. For example: http://stevesmit.com/2008/01/09/ninja-been-stumbled-upon/trackback/

If the URI has the words “comment#” or similar, just backspace past it. Then add /trackback/.

A good way to use trackbacks without looking like a spammer, is to do a search on similar posts. Then, type their trackback address into the field mentioned earlier. This worked very well for me on my old blog.

I hope that you now know what a trackback is and how to use it! I do it often and it works, so have a go.

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Tags: commenting, SEO, trackback, Traffic