by: AskPat 459 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 459 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Before we get onto Wesley's question, I do want to recommend that you actually head on over to EmailtheSmartWay.com. This is my brand new lead magnet that I created to help you figure out what kinds of content to put in your broadcasts and in your auto-responder emails. It's essentially a playbook, and you can just hand-pick the plays you want for the different emails. They each come with a different purpose, and different reason, and why they work, and different calls to action for each of them that you can use to help maximize your efforts with your email marketing. So, if you want to check it out, it's completely free. All you have do is sign up at EmailtheSmartWay.com. Go ahead, and check it out. Thanks so much.
Now, here's today's question, from Wesley.
Wes: Hey, Pat. This is Wes Winter. I'm an attorney in St. George, Utah. I'm a long-time listener. This is my first time speaking in. I have built and maintained a website, and my question is this: what do I do with trackbacks and pingbacks? What are those requests? Should I approve them? Should I delete them? I just don't have any idea. If you could shed some light on that, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks again. I will leave you with a reference that I know you will appreciate. I have to make like a tree and get out of here. Thanks. Bye.
Pat Flynn: Hey, Wesley. Thank you so much for the question, and an even a bigger thank you for the Back to the Future reference. As many of you know, at the time of this post going live, or this episode going live, it is October 23. Two days ago was October 21, which was the big day for all the Back to the Future fans. If you don't know what that means, don't worry, but a lot of you know I am huge fan. Anyway, thank you so much for that.
Now, let's get to trackbacks and pingbacks. For all intents and purposes, let's just consider them both the same thing. There are some minor differences between them, but basically, they were put into WordPress to increase the interactions between different blogs. It's a way for you to understand who else out there is actually talking about you and actually linking back to something that you've created. And for axwhile, it was working out really well, until spam happened. Then it just got ridiculously crazy, and it can get very ugly. There is an ungodly amount of spam when it comes to both trackbacks and pingbacks. People who are looking to push their own stuff out there, like blog comments, do this specifically just to get links back to their own website and just a lot of different things happen when it comes to giving people access to doing things that could potentially help them with their SEO.
So, as a result, comments, and things like trackbacks and pingbacks don't matter for SEO, because Google doesn't let it because it can be gamed, and it still exists because the spammers don't know any better. If you are getting pingbacks and trackbacks, which is something that … I believe, WordPress, when you first start it, has, in terms of the default setting, enabled for you … Before you make a decision to turn it off, just look at the ones that are coming in, and see if there are any legit ones. I mean, when was the last time your blog was sent a legitimate backtrack or backlink or … Excuse me, or trackback or pingback? They're more annoying than anything, and they don't even add that much value, so I wouldn't even enable them. Just turn them off, and keep focusing on the engagement on your website, and building relationships in a way that's beyond just an automated fashion like trackbacks and pingbacks. But actually reaching out, building relationships on social media, meeting people in person, and that sort of thing. Turn them off, disable them in the settings area of your WordPress back end, and you don't have to worry about them anymore.
So, that's it. Super short episode today. It's Friday, and I want you guys to enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you so much. I also want to thank Wesley specifically, obviously, for your question, and also let you know that you're gonna get an AskPat T-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. You see that? Just four minutes, and you already have a T-shirt. That's awesome.
And anybody else out there who has a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to askpat.com. You can ask right there on that page. I also want to thank Braintree. So, Braintree is sponsoring this episode. I want to thank them for that. Braintree gives you a full-stack payment solution, support for all payment types your customers might want. Start accepting Android Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, Bitcoin, Venmo, cards, and whatever's next. All with the single integration, across all platforms, with superior fraud protection, customer service, and fast payouts. So, check it out yourself; visit BraintreePayments.com/pat. Again, that's BraintreePayments.com/pat.
Thank you so much, and to finish off this episode and the week, here's a quote from Charlene Lee. She said, “We're all learning here. The best listeners will end up the smartest.” Thanks guys. Take care, and I'll see you next week, in the next episode of AskPat. Thanks so much. Bye.