Trackbacks are like a gentle nudge from one website to another, acknowledging that the other site linked to it. It’s like when someone mentions your name in conversation—it’s an acknowledgement that you exist! If you mention another person and then have them mention you back, then it’s much more obvious that there is some sort of relationship going on between the two of you.
In this guide, we find out: Are Trackbacks Good For Seo, what is a pingback in wordpress, what is relevance in seo, and wordpress pingback exploit.
Are Trackbacks Good For Seo
Do you know what trackbacks are? Even if you don’t, I bet that you’ve seen a lot of people talking about them on the internet. Trackbacks have been around for a long time, and they’re still used today. They’re basically a way for one website to tell another website that the other site linked to it. It’s like when someone mentions your name in conversation—it’s an acknowledgement that you exist!
What Are Trackbacks?
A trackback is an HTTP notification that a blog has linked to yours. If a blogger writes about one of your posts, and you link to their site in the post, that’s a pingback (a type of trackback).
Pingbacks are usually sent from the blog’s server to yours—but they can also be sent by your site or by another site. Each time someone links back to you, it signals that they like what you do and want more people to read what you have written. A pingback is essentially an endorsement: “Hey! You wrote something cool! Here’s my link; check it out!”
Disadvantages of Trackbacks
Trackbacks also have some disadvantages, however.
- Trackbacks aren’t as good as they used to be. They were originally intended to notify webmasters when another site linked to their content—but now, trackback spam has become a problem on the internet and many websites have opted out of trackbacks altogether or blocked them from being sent by third-party services like Ping-o-Matic.
How to Find Your Site’s Trackbacks
A trackback is a ping. You might have heard of pings before, and you may have even used them in your email program. A ping is a way of sending an email to notify someone that you’ve linked to their website. It’s like saying “Hey! I saw what you wrote and thought it was cool enough to link back.”
There are many reasons why you should use trackbacks on your own blog or website. First, trackbacks can help increase traffic for other blogs if those blogs choose to accept them by including them in their blog posts or webpages as well. Additional links from other sites can then lead more visitors from different sources over time because each link leads back here as well until eventually reaching its destination at yours!
what is a pingback in wordpress
In a previous knowledgebase article, we discussed trackbacks. Today we want to talk about pingbacks, which are slightly different, even though both terms are thrown around together a lot. A pingback is basically an automated comment that gets created when another blog links to you. There can also be self-pingbacks which are created when you link to an article within your own blog.
How a Pingback Works
So what is a pingback exactly? Well, to better understand it here is an example of how a pingback works.
Note: Both must have pingbacks enabled on their blogs for this to work. Depending upon the WordPress theme pingbacks normally show above or below the standard comments on a post. If you are running a 3rd party commenting system such as Disqus then pingback comments will not show up.
How to Disable Pingbacks
Pingbacks can be a great way to get notified of people linking to you, but they can also be annoying. There are much better tools out there now to track backlinks and mentions; such as Ahrefs, Buzzsumo, and SEMrush. So in most cases, you might want to simply disable pingbacks on your WordPress blog. Follow the steps below.
1. Disable Pingbacks from Other Blogs
Click into the “Discussion” area in your WordPress dashboard and uncheck the option “allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) on new articles.”
2. Disable Self Pingbacks
When it comes to disabling self-pingbacks you have a couple options. You can use the free No Self Pings plugin. Or you can use a premium plugin like perfmatters (developed by a team member at Kinsta), which allows you to disable self-pingbacks, along with other optimizations for your WordPress site.
Or you can create a child theme, after making a backup of your site, and add the following to your child theme’s functions.php file.
what is relevance in seo
If you want to market your business effectively, you need to get inside the minds of your target audience. Luckily, the exact words that people search for can provide you some insights. Specifically, the right words give you an idea about the type of content that your audience is looking for.
The keywords you use must relate to the product or service you offer. For example, if you have a floor waxing business, you probably don’t want to attract users searching for the best hair waxing salons.
This is where keyword relevance comes into play.
Today, we will discuss the importance of keyword relevance and provide some helpful tips for choosing the right keywords.
What is Keyword Relevance?
Back in the day, marketers could easily game Google’s system by excessively filling web pages with keywords.
One of the primary ranking factors for Google is relevance. The term “keyword relevance” refers to the importance of a certain keyword, phrase, or search term to a web page.
Relevancy is how Google and other search engines determine what your content is all about. It’s how the search engine giants decide which terms your page will rank for when there’s a user query.
In 2021, just randomly integrating keywords into your page won’t cut it; you must offer valuable information that matches and expands on a user’s search terms.
Why is Keyword Relevancy Important?
Google’s search algorithm now looks past keyword usage and actually evaluates the semantic meaning behind a search. If you want to improve your organic rankings, you need to optimize your blog with topically relevant content.
Relevancy also has to do with user behavior.
Search engines collect data to analyze a user’s journey – from asking questions to landing on a relevant web page.
When users engage in a search query and find what they’re looking for on your website, they’re less likely to return to Google and try a different result. Google recognizes when you provide value and a better user experience, and it will reward you with better positioning for the page(s) in question.
In most cases, publishing relevant pieces will also boost key performance indicators such as click-through rates and bounce rates.
How Do Search Engines Measure Keyword Relevancy?
For the longest time now, we have been urged by digital marketing experts (and Google itself), to put out high-quality and value-driven blog posts. And while the exact formula that Google uses to measure keyword relevancy remains a mystery, we do know that depth of expertise plays an important role.
Focus on Topical Authority
A crucial benchmark that Google uses to rank websites is Topical Authority.
When Google crawls your site, its algorithms analyze the topics covered on your blog and other pages. The more comprehensive your coverage of a particular topic is, the higher your Topical Authority score, and the better your organic visibility. Keyword relevancy is a key pillar in developing Topical Authority.
And again, while the exact standards Google implements to measure keyword relevancy are not known, there are a number of general best practices that marketers can implement to improve their topical authority (and in turn, keyword relevancy). One such best practice is the creation of topical hubs.
A topical hub – or “topic cluster” – is a composition of contextually connected posts/pages on your website. Benefits of building topical hubs include:
This last benefit is the most important with respect to keyword relevancy. I.e., topical hubs inform your research by allowing you to identify all of the words, phrases and search terms relevant to a specific topic.
While we won’t take a deep dive on topical hubs in this post, you can check out our recently published guide on the topic.
How Do You Choose the Right Keywords?
Keywords can make or break your SEO efforts. This is why keyword research is a crucial step in your quest to develop organic visibility. Below are some quick tips to help you choose the correct terms to optimize in your content efforts.
Get to Know Your Customers
When researching for key terms, you should never start by randomly brainstorming for words and phrases. Instead, be human and think like a customer – think critically about what people are searching for and why. Remember, satisfying search intent is the primary goal of Google.
When you match your content and pages with search intent, you will easily position your organization as a thought leader on a given topic.
One way to optimize for search intent is to extract data from SERPs by analyzing which terms are ranking well. This will help you understand why some pages rank better than others and how best to provide your audience with the knowledge they are looking for.
Use a Keyword Tool to Help Develop Relevant Keywords and Topics
Although there’s no shortage of SEO and content planning tools available, not all are created equal. While popular tools and services like Google Keyword Planner can certainly help you research keywords, most of these tools don’t offer relevance-based metrics.
We suggest MarketMuse as a keyword relevancy tool. In fact, we use it when developing our SEO-optimized content.
Not only can it provide you with a list of semantically related topics, but it quantifies the degree of relevance via its very own statistician-developed scoring system. MarketMuse generates relevant key phrases that don’t necessarily include the seed term but are still semantically related. You can learn more about this feature here.
Map Keywords to Your Content
Another crucial step in finding the right keywords is keyword mapping. Keyword mapping is the process of associating a page from your site to a term on your keyword list.
This strategy requires you to begin with identifying keywords and then proceed with content creation. After writing the content that targets your desired words and phrases, you simply create a spreadsheet and manually match your web pages to your keywords.
Mapping positions you to effectively organize your content while avoiding duplicate content. Additionally, a content map gives you a birds-eye view of your content marketing campaigns, helping you to identify content gaps and opportunities for new keywords.
Avoid Keyword Stuffing
Keyword density is no longer a viable tactic. In fact, it’s a surefire way to kill your SEO.
As mentioned before, optimizing for search intent should be your top priority. Google’s Natural Language Processing (NLP) uses machine learning to understand the structure and meaning of your content. As a result, you don’t have to include dozens of keywords in your content to achieve a high ranking. Focus on quality – not quantity – and avoid fluff at all costs.
Rank Higher With Keyword Relevancy
Relevant content is driven by keyword relevancy. By putting relevancy front and center, you’ll not only improve your organic visibility, but you will attract an audience that is more likely to buy your products and services. Remember to focus on topical hubs, and be sure to target those keywords that matter most to your audience.
Do you prioritize keyword relevancy in your content efforts? We’d love to hear more about your success stories in the comments below.
Hey, I’m Vin. Founder and CEO of WordAgents.com. I create content that ranks really well on search engines for our clients. I’m also deeply involved with the SEO community; maintaining a portfolio of successful, profitable affiliate websites. You can find me playing guitar, drinking scotch, and hanging out with my German Shorthaired Pointer when I’m not working!
Boost your search rankings with keyword-optimized content, keep your blog fresh and user’s engaged with blog posts and articles, and get conversion-oriented copy and product descriptions.
We help Publishers and Agencies reach massive scale with our highly researched and SEO optimized content, eCommerce websites with our product and category descriptions, and Local SMEs engage their audiences with our strategic content production.
wordpress pingback exploit
While you may hear a lot about WordPress exploits, it could be that you’re not familiar with how the pingback mechanism in WordPress works, or how it can be used by dastardly hackers.
One of the most popular approaches is to use the XML-RPC mechanism, inherent in WordPress, because it gives hackers the ability to push many requests through a single server requests.
Yes, read that again. When using xmlrpc.php as a hacking tool, hackers are able to send 1 single request to the server (instead of 50, 100 or 500), but within that 1 request, they can include an entire array of other requests. Imagine being able to brute force attack a site with thousands of requests, without ever triggering the brute force / DDoS defensive systems – it’s a very efficient approach.
Sucuri, one of the top brands in WordPress security, explains all the ins and outs about system.multicall and exactly how this “amplification” of attacks occurs within WordPress. They also publish some fantastic stats related to WordPress security, such as the fact that pingback DDoS attacks account for 13% of all DDoS attacks they track!
For more about distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, check out the KnownHost blog
How are WordPress Pingbacks Spoofed in DDoS Attacks and Login Hacks?
Pingbacks are used in about 1/8th of all DDoS attacks and a large portion of login hacks, largely because they originally weren’t verified before being accepted and added.
As the Sucuri post explains, originally WordPress pingbacks were logged somewhat simplistically. It wasn’t until version 3.9 that the IP address started being logged and the pingback link verified:
In newer versions, additional detail become available:
After you see a number of logged entries all from the same IP, 185.130.5.247, you can do a reverse WHOIS lookup on the IP and find out who is responsible for sending the attacks. It could very well be that their machine has been compromised and isn’t aware they’re part of a botnet – or it could be that they’re just malicious.
In the newer example above, the WordPress/4.2.7 version, origination IP and origination site URL have all been spoofed (completely faked).
With verification in place, WordPress will check behind the scenes to confirm the site in question has a post with a link to your site. If it doesn’t, the WordPress pingbacks will never appear in your queue to be approved.