Comment on Technical Support by SEO Dave.

WordPress Technical Support There are two SEO aspects to WordPress trackbacks and pingbacks, one positive SEO the other negative SEO.

Let’s deal with the positive SEO impact of trackbacks and pingbacks.

Under “Settings” >> “Discussion” if you tick “Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the article” when you add a link to another website from one of your WordPress posts it will ping the webpage linked to.

If you link to a webpage that shows webpages that have linked to it (via Trackbacks) you will gain a backlink to your WordPress post.

The vast majority of CMS’s like WordPress which have a trackback link system like this adds a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the trackback link which means Google ignores it for ranking purposes (so your page doesn’t gain any direct SEO benefit from a nofollow link).

Still it’s a link a real visitor can click and a minority of websites don’t add the rel=”nofollow” attribute, so could have a small positive impact (for you there’s no negative SEO impact).

Because of these automated links some blackhat SEO’s will ping webpages they know will add a trackback back to their sites. You have to remember most webmasters don’t understand Google SEO, many wrongly believe a nofollow link does pass direct SEO benefit, so for those with trackbacks and pingbacks turned on they will get trackback and pingback SPAM.

And that brings us to the negative SEO impact of trackbacks and pingbacks.

Under “Settings” >> “Discussion” if you tick “Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks)” and/or on Edit Post and Edit Page screens tick “Allow trackbacks and pingbacks on this page.” your WordPress posts and pages will generate trackback and pingback links to websites linking to your posts and you’ll be sending automated links to any webpage which links to you!

This is negative SEO wise, anything automated link wise will be manipulated by blackhat SEOs. You have no control over who links to a WordPress post, if a porn site links to a post, you’ll send a trackback link to the porn site.

As mentioned above the link will include rel=”nofollow” so Google will ignore it SEO wise, BUT nofollow actually deletes the link benefit that would have flowed through the link. So every trackback link from your site is wasting the SEO link benefit equivalent of linking to a webpage!!!

I recommend these settings.

Under “Settings” >> “Discussion”

Tick : “Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the article”
Untick : “Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks)”

Under Edit Post and Edit Page screens:

Untick : “Allow trackbacks and pingbacks on this page.”

You will benefit from trackbacks to your site, but not damage your sites SEO by having trackbacks from your site.

David