What's A "Pingback" and What Do You Do With Them?

What’s A “Pingback” and What Do You Do With Them?

Posted by Linus Ruzicka On June - 14 - 2010

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When I started blogging, after I wrote a blog post I started getting these things called “Pingbacks.”

I remember thinking to myself, “what are pingbacks and what am I supposed to do with them?

(No, it’s not Sean Connery in “The Hunt For The Red October” saying “One ping, and one ping only!”)

So I kind of blew them off for a while.

Then I started promoting my blog posts into articles using the Unique Article Writer, and within hours of articles being submitted, I started getting pingbacks like crazy.

So I took it as a sign to start digging deeper to define a pingback for myself and my team.

What’s A Pingback?

I’m going to use an example of my blog and article writing.

I post something on my blog and submit it to the article sites.

The article site accepts my article that links to my blog post. This automatically sends a pingback to my blog when both have pingback enabled sites.

My blog receives the pingback, then automatically goes to the article site to confirm that the pingback did come from my site.

So What Do you Do With Them?

After starting to receive this massive flow of pingbacks, I had to take a look at what to do with them.

So I posted this question to the source I typically go to when I have these sorts of questions: Better Networker forums.

In fact, here is the direct link to the forum post that I created: What Do You Do With Pingbacks?

I’ll let you read the information that I found inside of the forum post itself, but I will high-lite the most important part here.

This Is Why I Go To Better Networker When I Have A Question

Thanks to Kurt Henninger I was able to find my answer. So make sure to drop by his site and give him some love as well. This guy knows his SEO strategies!

Because of Kurt, I have been implementing a New 5-step strategy for dealing with pingbacks and working to get them indexed in the search engines for the last few weeks.

When you receive a Pingback from an article site or any other blog, simply take the web address of that specific article site and run it through these following steps:

1. Pingomatic – It’s part of the WordPress family. All you do is submit the web address of the specific article you submitted and put it in the site, and click “Submit to Sites.” It will submit that URL to 21 different services notifying them of your new posted article.

2. Digg, Delicious, Reddit, Mister Wong – Social Bookmarking sites. We all know the power of these sites.

3. Ice Rocket – This is a free RSS builder. What it does is set up an RSS feed specific to your article.

4. Traffic Mania RSS Bot – Take the RSS feed from Ice Rocket and submit it to this program. It will submit the RSS feed you just created in Ice Rocket to the many different RSS directories. There is a $19.95 per month membership for this. It is a powerful tool if your are going to use this strategy, so judge if you’re going to use the tool (and yes, this is my affiliate link),

5. Google Blog Search – Simply submit that same RSS feed from Ice Rocket to Google Blog Search.

Honestly, That’s It

Really, there is nothing more to it.

Now you simply let the webcrawlers do their work and start indexing your articles that contain backlinks to your blog posts!

Can you say SEO power?

Well, There Is One More Thing…

Since I know that you found something unique and useful in this post and will likely help out others in trying to figure out what to do with their pingbacks, there are two little boxes at the top of this post – the Facebook Share and TweetME button. Make sure to take 7 seconds and click each one for me. I thank you in advance!

Leaving No Network Marketer Behind,

14 Responses to “What’s A “Pingback” and What Do You Do With Them?”

Peter Fuller MBA CA says:

June 14, 2010 at 11:46 AM

Thanks Linus and Kurt.

Isn’t Better Networker great.

Like Linus previously, I have been not been paying attention to these pings and was wondering what they were and how to use them.

Solid content Linus.

[Reply]
Linus Ruzicka Reply:
June 15th, 2010 at 6:19 AM
Peter,

Yeah…one of those things you never hear about, yet wonder what to do with them.

I figured they had to be useful somewhere since I was getting so many of them.

Glad to finally find a use from them!

Linus

[Reply]
Bill Palte says:

June 15, 2010 at 6:40 AM

Hey Linus,

Thanks for sharing info on “another” of those online mysteries. Your explanation is one of the best I have seen. Great post on a great subject.

I know I will be catching up on my blog pings…using your suggestions.

To Your Continued Success,
Bill

[Reply]
Linus Ruzicka Reply:
June 15th, 2010 at 3:06 PM
Palte,

Pingbacks were honestly something that i never wanted to deal with. But with the amount I was getting, I couldn’t ignore it any more.

So that’s why I went on a little investigation.

The results are what you read in the post.

Thanks for diving into that “black hole” of online mysteries with me on this one.

Linus

[Reply]
Yo Le says:

June 15, 2010 at 8:20 AM

Linus,

Thanks for doing the research on Pingbacks!

I seriously had no idea what the heck to do with them when I started getting them. I’ve been accepting some of them here and there… but now I’m going to implement this strategy that you’ve just outlined.

To new found levels of organic traffic!

- Yo

[Reply]
Linus Ruzicka Reply:
June 15th, 2010 at 3:08 PM
Yo,

Like you I was actually “accepting them” as comments without really knowing what the heck to do with them.

It wasn’t until I thought about asking about it in BN that I got an answer.

Implementing the strategy for “indexing” them can be a bit tedious the first 1-2 times you try it.

God Bless,

Linus

[Reply]
Barry Monteiro says:

June 16, 2010 at 6:26 AM

Great post Linus! Mystery solved. I think addressing pingbacks is one of those ‘Go the extra mile’ steps most marketers don’t take.

No surprise you’d be looking to investigate the matter!

Thanks!

Barry

[Reply]
Linus Ruzicka Reply:
June 18th, 2010 at 1:34 PM
Barry,

You bring up a great point. Going that extra mile is what separates those that find success versus those that do not.

At what length are you willing to go to find your success?

Linus

[Reply]
John Stone says:

June 17, 2010 at 7:48 AM

Linus,

Thanks for explaining what to do with the pingbacks.

John

[Reply]
Linus Ruzicka Reply:
June 18th, 2010 at 1:37 PM
John,

Any time brother!

Linus

[Reply]
Tracey Rissik says:

June 17, 2010 at 10:38 AM

Hi Linus,

thanks for this great article – and in particular your summary of the original “Better Networker” article, as I have to say it bamboozled my brain when I was reading it

I’ve recently been blogging about pinging & ping lists (for pages and posts in WordPress – check out my blog if you like) but hadn’t realised what a fantastic resource pingBACKS could be too – so many thanks for informing us all.

Best wishes
Tracey

[Reply]
Linus Ruzicka Reply:
June 18th, 2010 at 1:38 PM
Tracey,

LOL…isn’t it funny when you dig just a little bit deeper?

I saw these pingbacks coming in. so I knew there had to be SOMETHING to do with all of them. I almost felt like I was wasting them all if there was really nothing to do with them.

God Bless,
Linus

[Reply]
Tristan Richards says:

July 24, 2010 at 7:24 AM

This has been really helpful Linus…. Thanks my friend

[Reply]
Linus Ruzicka Reply:
July 24th, 2010 at 10:51 AM
Tristan,

Thanks for stopping by and commenting brother!

Were you in Vegas for the No Excuses Summit?

Linus

[Reply]