Blog Training and How-To Guide for Business Blogging

A TrackBack (commonly written "trackback") is an incoming link notification - an acknowledgment, if you will.  When someone publishes a Web article that links to a post at your blog, a network signal ("ping") can get sent to your blog and cause a little notice to be published at the bottom of your post.  This notice typically includes the URL and title of the article that is linking to you, as well as a brief snippet of the first few words of the article.

Why should you care about trackbacks?  I can see a few main reasons:

1. Internal blog organization - When you link back to your older blog posts, trackbacks can appear on those older posts and draw a bit of traffic back toward your newer posts.  This also helps your blog stay organized because the posts link to each other more frequently. 

2. Traffic boost - You can often get a little traffic boost by putting a trackback on a popular blog in your niche.  For example, if your blog is about Google and TechCrunch just published a post on Google, you can publish your reaction to the TechCrunch article and watch as some TechCrunch readersdiscover your blog via the trackback that will appear at the TechCrunch post.

3. Richer online conversation - Picture this: You get an email notifying you that someone has just linked to your recent post about cell phones.  You immediately follow the link in the trackback and discover that the other blogger has posted her reaction to your thoughts.  This makes it easier for you to respond in kind and form a connection with that blogger.

Know More Media uses Movable Type, which was developed by Six Apart, makers of the TrackBack protocol.  Unfortunately, we've had to disable trackbacks on all our blogs in recent months due to incredible amounts of trackback spam.  I hope Six Apart can figure out how to eliminate the flood so we can turn trackbacks back on.

Helpful links:

Cruft has a nice explanation of trackbacks including pictures. 

Douglas Karr also has a good explanation and diagram.

Brave souls should check out the official technical specifications for TrackBacks.