A pingback is a fairly recent term in the Internet world, referring to a sort of incoming link from one website or blog to another. Pingbacks have becoming increasingly important, especially for bloggers who interact often and depend on incoming links for much of their blog traffic. To fully understand a pingback, you must examine how it works and why it is important for today's bloggers.
Mechanics
When you include a link to another blog inside your website or blog's content, the fact that you linked to the blog will appear in its comments section. This will happen only if the the other blog's software is set up to accept pingbacks. The pingback appears in the comments section as a quote from your site and provides a link to your content. If you are the one receiving the link, you may be asked to approve a comment that looks like this. Unless it is coming from a spam site, you should approve it.
How to Get Pingbacks
Getting a pingback means someone linked to your blog. This person may be another blogger or site owner, meaning they may have found your blog through a search engine, but more likely from a link on another blog they read or a comment you made. Bloggers trust the word of other bloggers and do a lot of reading. If you interact in the blogging world by reading other sites and commenting, chances are, other bloggers will visit your site. If you write high-quality, useful content, someone may link to you and generate a pingback.
Pingbacks and Google
Pingbacks increase the incoming links to your blog. This makes the Google spider (the page-ranking algorithm) like you more. While your Google page rank is not totally dependent on backlinks, they can give you a serious boost. And it's likely that if you have other blogs linking to you, your content is pretty good and Google already favors you over keyword-stuffed, contentless sites.
How Pingbacks Help
Pingbacks not only drive traffic to your blog from Google, they also increase your presence in the blogging world. They are a way of showing other bloggers that you read their work. This allows you to build Internet relationships, which will generate future traffic for your blog. Pingbacks can increase your non-Google traffic because people reading the blog's comments may click the link to your site.
Mechanics
When you include a link to another blog inside your website or blog's content, the fact that you linked to the blog will appear in its comments section. This will happen only if the the other blog's software is set up to accept pingbacks. The pingback appears in the comments section as a quote from your site and provides a link to your content. If you are the one receiving the link, you may be asked to approve a comment that looks like this. Unless it is coming from a spam site, you should approve it.
How to Get Pingbacks
Getting a pingback means someone linked to your blog. This person may be another blogger or site owner, meaning they may have found your blog through a search engine, but more likely from a link on another blog they read or a comment you made. Bloggers trust the word of other bloggers and do a lot of reading. If you interact in the blogging world by reading other sites and commenting, chances are, other bloggers will visit your site. If you write high-quality, useful content, someone may link to you and generate a pingback.
Pingbacks and Google
Pingbacks increase the incoming links to your blog. This makes the Google spider (the page-ranking algorithm) like you more. While your Google page rank is not totally dependent on backlinks, they can give you a serious boost. And it's likely that if you have other blogs linking to you, your content is pretty good and Google already favors you over keyword-stuffed, contentless sites.
How Pingbacks Help
Pingbacks not only drive traffic to your blog from Google, they also increase your presence in the blogging world. They are a way of showing other bloggers that you read their work. This allows you to build Internet relationships, which will generate future traffic for your blog. Pingbacks can increase your non-Google traffic because people reading the blog's comments may click the link to your site.