If you’re a blogger, chances are you’ve heard of trackbacks. Most likely, you probably don’t know what these are and what they have to do with your blog. That’s alright, as most people don’t quite understand how trackbacks work and why they are useful for a blog. In this newsletter, we’re going to go over trackbacks—what they are, how they work, why they are important to blog traffic, and how to get more trackbacks. After you’ve read this, you’ll know practically everything there is to know about trackbacks.

What are trackbacks?

The concept of trackbacks is a bit hard to explain. So we’ll use an example to explain it in the best way possible.

OK, say you see a great blog post on another person’s blog and want to link to it on your blog. You could do this the old-fashioned way by manually putting a link on your site to that blog. However, if you do it this way, the person whose blog post you are linking to won’t know that you are linking to them unless you tell them.

This is where trackbacks come in. A trackback is a program which will notify the owner of a blog when one of their posts has been linked to at another blog.

How do they work?

A blog that has a trackback system set up will have a link at the bottom of every blog post. This link will say something like “Blog This!” Anyone who clicks the link can then put a link to that blog post on their site. The person who posted the original blog will then be notified via email that their blog posting has been linked to. Additionally, the link that was clicked (“Blog This!”) will change to “Trackbacks”. From that point forward, the “Trackbacks” link will keep track of how many people have chosen to blog about that particular post. So after the first trackback, it will say “Trackbacks: 1”. The number of trackbacks recorded will be updated as they occur.

Why are trackbacks important to blog traffic?

The easy answer is that trackbacks are important because they increase awareness of your blog. Trackbacks also make a blog seem more credible. After all, people have to think your posts are good enough to be trackbacked.

Anytime a person makes a trackback on your blog, they make a post on their own blog about your blog. This, in turn, lets their readers know about your blog. Chances are, their readers will want to visit your blog to see what the big deal is. If they see something on your blog that they like, they’ll keep coming back for more, which means you’ll have a whole new fanbase of readers. That means more traffic for your blog.

Can you imagine what would happen if 5 different bloggers trackbacked a post on your blog? Depending on how popular their blog is, that’s potentially as much as hundreds of new readers for your blog! Pretty incredible, right?

Also, every trackback made, assuming it is a legitimate one (and some trackbacks are spam, especially if they are there only to link to another site) adds credibility to your blog. Blogs with high amounts of trackbacks look credible because lots of people like the posts enough to trackback them.

How can I increase the number of trackbacks I get?

The easiest and best way to increase trackbacks is to frequently post. If you post frequently (2-3 times a week), people will have quite a few posts that they can trackback. However, it is important to make sure that your posts are of a good quality. Quality blog posts are those that people can relate to and are easy to read. If you post a long boring rant, people probably won’t want to trackback that. But if you post a decent sized rant that is entertaining (and that people are likely to agree with), you’ll get trackbacked.

The number of trackbacks you get is totally dependent on the number of visitors your blog receives and how frequently you are able to make quality posts. If you’ve got a good amount of visitors and write good blog posts, you’ll get trackbacks.