Did you know some of the best links you can receive look like spam unless you know what they are?

If you are running a blog or other type of website outside of ActiveRain, you know how important backlinks (links from other sites to yours) are for the popularity of your site with search engines. I think most people will agree that the most powerful backlinks you can receive are links embedded within an article. These are sometimes called "in content links" and search engines give them more "weight" when assessing the authority of your site. And it is very flattering to a blogger when someone thinks well enough of an article to refer to it in writing!

If you have ever had a comment on your blog that looks something like this:

[...] Should I Tell My Loan Officer About The Loan Thats Not On MY Credit Report by Buckwheat for SoundBiteBlog [...]

...and deleted it as garbage or spam, you have just dumped a comment that tells the world another site is writing about your post! It's is called a Trackback and it means that somebody is writing about you! Acccck!

Bloggers who are using Wordpress have the ability to automate this function. Wordpress includes a field in which the blogger inserts the Trackback address to the article he/she is writing about. When the blogger publishes the post he/she is working on, Wordpress automatically notifies the original blog site by adding a comment that looks like the example above. There is an older article on ColoGuy's site that explains trackbacks simply.

Trackbacks are used by the more savvy bloggers. And the more savvy bloggers tend to have higher rated websites. You don't want to lose a backlink from the highly rated sites. Removing a trackback comment can appear to be an insult. Even if you removed it thinking it was spam, nobody likes to see their comments deleted! Not even the automated comments. At best, you appear to be a novice; at worst, you will insult someone.

Many bloggers who use Wordpress also use the Akismet plugin. Akismet checks all comments against a list of known spammers. Unfortunately, Trackbacks are often filtered by the Akismet plugin (at least mine have been). So, if you are using Akismet, you need to watch what it filters. Don't just hit "Delete All" and move on.

Trackbacks won't happen if you do not have them enabled! Your blogging platform (wordpress for example) needs to be configured to allow trackbacks. A trackback is a special address. Your blogging platform needs to know you want to make this address available. Check your 'options' or 'settings' to have your site generate trackback addresses for all of your posts. It only takes a few minutes and you might be surprised at the results.