Savvy Affiliate

The Ping Is A Powerful Tool For Driving Traffic, Use it Wisely

Linking to other blogs is critical to getting traffic for your own site.   Why is it so important?  Well if you are using any modern blogging software, when you link to other blogs it sends a ping to that site.  When the site is pinged, if track backing is enabled, a link to your own site will be placed in their comments.  Although the link is usually no good for search engine rankings, it can still be very powerful

1) Trackbacks on other sites direct their readers to you - One way of building your readership is just to go where they are located, namely other blogs.  If you track back on other sites, especially popular ones, some readers are likely to follow the link back to your site.

2) More Importantly, trackbacks direct the other bloggers to you - One of the main reasons to ping blogs is not to get their readers attention, but to get the attention of the blogger.  If I ping a blog and the blogger follows my link back and likes what he sees I have gained a lot more than if I just get a trace back from one of the readers.  If the other bloggers like your site they are likely to reciprocate your links.  I would much rather have a couple links to my site in someones main post with good anchor text than lots of trackbacks trying to get their readers attention.   I found this out in a post where I pinged Lorelle on Wordpress.  She followed my link back, and made a very insightful comment on my blog, answering a question much better than I would have been able to.

3) Don’t abuse your pings however - Although it can be good to ping other bloggers, you shouldn’t abuse this power.  Many bloggers consider too much pinging to be spam.  You shouldn’t ping the same blog repeatedly, and you especially shouldn’t ping the same post multiple times.  If you are ping spamming a site they are more likely to block you than trace you back and become a reader.   So be sure to make use of pings, but not too much

Do you use trackbacks enough?  Or do you think you could use them more?   Try giving a trackback to this post.  My readership may be light, but I do trace my pings back to their source.