September 13, 2006
Blogging: Best Practices for Trackbacks
A trackback represents an effective means of communicating between blogs. If a blog trackbacks to another blogger’s post, then that post will appear in both places. Bloggers use trackbacks to continue conversations in the blogosphere, as well as capitalize on web traffic by directing visitors from one blog to their own blog.
There are some best practices to consider when doing trackbacks:
- Only trackback to a blog post when it is relevant to your post.Trackbacks are a means of extending, improving, or elaborating upon a particular subject. Trackback only when you are contributing to the conversation.
- Do not trackback to a post that has nothing to do with your post. People can tell when you are doing a trackback simply to drive traffic to your blog. This type of practice will diminish your reputation and your brand.
- Before doing a trackback, consider whether you would allow a trackback from the other author. While the rules of blogging are relatively unwritten, you do not want to get blasted in the blogosphere for being rude, unfair or dishonest. Be truthful and transparent.
- Before doing a trackback, make sure the blog you are going to appear on does not negatively impact your brand or drive visitors you do not want.
- If you have more than one blog, and you are doing multiple postings, make sure your software removes the trackback after the first post (you may have to do it manually); otherwise, your trackback will appear each time you post.
- There is nothing wrong with doing trackbacks to multiple blogs that are discussing the same subject. Simply follow the above rules and include all of you trackbacks at once to avoid having to publish your post again. If you post and then find another blog entry that you would like to do an additional trackback to, make sure you remove the first trackback if your software does not do it for you.
Am I missing any? Clearly, you have to be reading other people’s blogs to utilize trackbacks. RSS is key to successfully staying on top of your favorite blogs. If you do not have an aggregator like Bloglines, My Yahoo, or Google, you need to start.
Technorati : RSS, blogging, blogosphere, trackbacks
