When Should You NOT Approve A Trackback Comment?
The secret is out: Trackbacks make great links. And it’s a really simple thing. Someone writes a blog post that you like and you respond on your own blog. If you use WordPress, you can copy the permalink of the blog post that you are responding to in the trackback field below the Write Post field. Your blog post will appear as a comment on the other blogger’s software Admin panel. They can approve or reject it. If they approve your trackback then your blog post will appear as a comment on their blog post, giving you a reciprocal link. If they reject your comment then you will be providing their blog with a one-way link and no reciprocal link love. Should you ever do that?
You bet. Keep in mind that one-way links are more valuable than reciprocal links, especially from relevant sites. It is considered tacky to reject trackbacks just because you want that highly coveted one-way back link. The content that appears in your comments is important too, for several reasons. But that doesn’t mean you should approve every trackback. There are times when you’d want to say “No” to that trackback. When are they?
You might reject a trackback for the following reasons:
- The comment is from a known spam site - If you know that a particular site is a known spam site, even if their trackback seems legitimate, then you might not want to approve their trackback comment.
- The trackback itself appears to be a form of spam and not really a true comment - Sometimes legitimate bloggers are guilty of spam too. It might be inadvertent or blatant. Either way, you have readers to protect.
- You are being linked to from a site whose mission and purpose you don’t agree with entirely - You have to be careful with this one. Just because you don’t agree with what they are doing doesn’t mean that everyone will disagree or that their business model is a bad one. But if it is obvious that what the blogger is doing is unethical or illegal then you shouldn’t promote it.
- The site is a non-relevant site and you don’t want to lose your blog readers to a non-relevant site - Sometimes you’ll get a link from a non-relevant site and you just don’t want to lose your visitors to that site.
- The blogger linking to you links to you too often - Some bloggers just overdo a good thing.
- The trackback is inconsistent with your comment policy - If you have a comment policy and a trackback blatantly is in violation, don’t make an exception just because it’s a trackback.
- The trackback is from a site that exists primarily for advertising - If the only content on a blog or website linking to you is advertising, other than content that you created, then don’t link back to them; this is just like spam.
- The site is a malware or warez site - Don’t send your readers anywhere you wouldn’t want to go.
These may not be the only reasons you’d want to reject a trackback comment, but these are good reasons not to keep those trackback comments alive on your site. You have readers to protect, so protect them. And protect your own reputation as well.
August 19th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Thanks to the article, Now there is more reason to comment than ever before! Everyone should participate. I am incorporating what your wrote to our project!
August 20th, 2008 at 11:10 am
I approved the above spam comment as an example of the type of comment I am talking about. These kinds of comments are obviously spam. Here’s why:
This particular commentator was trying to game us by writing fluff and getting traffic to their site. They may be even trying to get a backlink, but because their backlink is coming from a non-relevant site to their own, it won’t help them much. Nevertheless, I hope the above comment illustrates well the type of comment you should reject.