Search engines are an excellent means of generating organic traffic to your website and to better boost your website’s search results, nothing better than including a blog section where you can address topics inherent to your business.
However, writing articles on your blog goes beyond just text. There is also a lot of SEO work and also interactivity. This is where Trackbacks and Pingbacks come in, interaction tools between blogs that can be advantageous for your site if used correctly.
What are Trackbacks and Pingbacks?
Trackbacks allow communication across multiple sites. Simply put, it’s like one person suggesting something to another that they might like.
For example, if we write an article on our website and if you are interested in commenting on that same article, ensuring that your website readers can see and comment on what you wrote, you only need to write an article on your website and send a Trackback to our article that commented.
Then, we can choose whether to display your article as a response to our article, which will be done through a title, an excerpt and a link with direct access to the article you wrote on your website.
Pingbacks allow communication similar to Trackbacks but in an automated way.
Following the example above, if you reference an article of ours on your website, through a link, what happens is that your website will automatically send information to our website. Once this Pingback is confirmed, we will be able to display your article as a comment, which will only be presented with a link to your website.
Pingbacks are also between mentions of your own blog. These are called auto-pingbacks, and can be a bit distracting if not disabled.
What distinguishes a Trackback from a Pingback?
In fact, the difference is not considerable. The technology is basically based on the same premise: generating traffic between sites. Only the approach turns out to be different, since Trackbacks are done manually, while Pingbacks are done automatically.
What are the advantages and disadvantages?
Currently, this type of functionality is not something that is very common, since we live in the age of social networks. When blogs were the main place for sharing experiences, opinions, information, among others, Trackbacks were the most subtle and, at the same time, direct way of creating a conversation between two authors.
Even so, they can help your website traffic, if it is referenced in relevant blogs, complement the SEO through the links used and, indirectly, promote partnerships with other authors that are advantageous for your business.
As far as the disadvantages are concerned, unfortunately both Trackbacks and Pingbacks are a tool often used by spammers to proliferate unwanted information links. This can generate a snowball effect in the management of your site, as the number of processes you receive can make it difficult and delay the evaluation of mentions on your site. If you choose not to filter the Pingbacks and Trackbacks you received, you may also be compromising your site’s SEO, as your site will automatically be allowing a multitude of nefarious links filled with unnecessary keywords.
Should I use Trackbacks and Pingbacks?
If we go for security and ease, the recommendation is to disable Trackbacks on your website, since the Internet is full of bots that propagate automatic comments, thus generating endless spam, which could harm your website.
On the other hand, Pingbacks still have their uses. However, these require attentive and careful management. For a better use of this tool, we recommend
use of an anti-spam plugin on your website and another that also blocks Pingbacks generated by your own website. If you are still interested in establishing partnerships with other authors, get in direct contact with them in order to facilitate the exchange of Pingbacks, without these being marked as spam.
Although not essential for your website’s SEO, Pingbacks turn out to be a very interesting way to generate organic traffic.
Were it not for us in the era of Social Networks and the Internet being full of spammers, our recommendation would be to bet on both functionalities. Given the circumstances, the best thing is to ensure the best possible configuration and optimization of your site in terms of security and SEO.
