dealing and scheming with trackbacks

A few weeks ago when I was still very much active on this blog I wrote a little slice of advice called : 'Why you shouldn't promote your blog' . And in it I made a list of things you can do to promote your blog . After that I wrote another article that was , in a way , describing the first method that I listed in that article .

Today I decided to do a follow up and deal with trackbacks , the second method that I was talking about in the first article .

( And just like that : I got myself 2 trackbacks on my own blog - these types of 'in-blog' links are very useful for search engine optimization and you should use them as often as you can without going overboard of course . But we will discuss about SEO in future posts . )

One thing that people seem to forget about trackbacks is that trackbacks are , in a twisted way , just comments . That's it . 

And because they are just comments you should respect the rules that apply to comments and that is :

 - post something useful .

 - whatever you write , write from start to finish . ( don't just throw in an idea and move on , explain yourself and your thoughts so that people will understand them ) .

As with comments , be very careful not to step into spamming . No one likes a spammer . You see this with articles that are basically just links to various articles . Say what you will but that is just a cheap way to get some trackbacks . That is just spamming .

So ... the following 2 rules ( I don't think there are more than 2 - if you know something that I don't please let me know ) apply when working for trackbacks :

1 : Don't write for the trackback . Write cause you need to write . Don't just write an article and then , somewhere in there , throw in a link to a site dealing with something related .

For example don't write an article about search engine optimization and then link to an article about trackbacks just because you have the word 'trackback' in there .

This spells out : 'desperate' .

You might say to yourself : ' But it's good , I'm doing this to offer more info to my readers . '

No , you're not . If you we're doing it for that purpose you would have linked to a wiki page describing trackbacks , for instance .

Best possible trackbacks you can get are those that are focused on a precise article . You read an article on some blog and that article sparks an idea . Instead of posting a comment you write a complete article dealing with the very ideas written in the initial post .

This brings us to the second rule in trackback'ing :

2 : Fish your potential readers .

This means 2 things :

 - make sure to use a certain title for your post , one that spells out : 'this article is related to what you are currently reading' .

One might use : '5 more ways to write a book' for a trackback to an article that is titled : '10 ways to write a book' .

 - some blogs ( in fact , a lot of them ) allow a short excerpt of your article . This usually is the text around the link . So make sure you post your link within a paragraph that is eye catching .