Cross-linking and Trackbacks

If you have been following some of my other blogs, you will have noticed this week that my Mitchendise blog linked to the From Pink Slip blog.  The content on these blogs will often cross paths since they are related but still separate enough to maintain their own sites.  This brings up something that you might see on the internet quite often.  Cross-linking or Trackbacking. 

What is a Cross-link or a Trackback?

Cross-linking is really the linking of two related sites either in a post to draw readers attention to those sites (as I did in the opening paragraph), or even putting it on a “blogroll” type of link list (as you can see on my blogroll I have cross-linked to my other sites). 

A Trackback is a term usually used in the blog world and soemtimes seen in the comment area where one blog has not only posted a link to another blog, but has posted a link to a specific post on the other blog.  A normal trackback wouldn’t just post the link and be done with it; a normal trackback would include the author of a post including some original content that was related to the other blog’s post, and then linking to that post.

I will give you a real example.  On my Mitchendise site I did a trackback to a post on Speak Without Interruption.  In that post I stated some thought that was related to the Speak Without Interruption post, and linked a paragraph to the specific post I was talking about.  Since all of these sites were using WordPress, the software automatically notified the Speak Without Interruption site and a comment/trackback was automatically input. 

For the templates we are both using, those trackbacks can be found by clicking the “trackback” link when you see it listed under a post.  How do you know if there is a trackback?  Usually the comment counter will show more comments than what you see.  Or click the Trackback link and find out.

Did this help explain what a trackback and cross-linking are?  Give me your feedback, maybe I can help further.

Johnny