How To Create A Pingback On A WordPress Blog

A pingback is a link that allows you to notify another blogger that you have linked to a post or article on their blog or website. In some cases, pingbacks are also known as trackbacks.

If the other blogger has a Pingback enabled website, then they can see a notification that you have linked to their article. They can then choose to allow your link to appear on their blog.

In turn, this may drive traffic to your blog when readers click on the pingback notification.

Today, I’m going to show you how to create a pingback on the Gutenberg editor. It’s an easy process and is very similar to creating a pingback on the Classic editor (with just a few small differences).

Let’s get started

In the screenshots below, I’m creating a pingback on my ‘About Hugh’ page to an interview I recently did for blogger and author Esther Chilton.

First of all, decide which word or words you want to be the pingback link. In this case, I’m using the words ‘Esther Chilton Blog.’

Highlight the word or words you have chosen and click on the pingback link that appears in the window that opens.

Copy and paste, into the URL box, the URL link to the blog post or article you want to link to.

Tip – If you are linking to one of your own blog posts, you can search for the post by typing some words from the title of the post into the box.

Click on the ‘link setting’ arrow.

In the new window that opens (under the box where you have pasted the URL link), slide open the ‘open in New Tab’ button.

This is important because when anybody clicks on your pingback, the blog post you’ve linked to will open in a new window on their screen. Therefore, when they click on the pingback, your blog will not be closed down on their screen.

Click on the ‘apply pingback’ button and remember to save the changes to the post.

Your pingback is now created and will be highlighted as a pingback on the post.

Tip – You can also highlight the pingback by making the text bold. To do this, highlight the text and click on the ‘B’ – bold button.

Before publishing your post, preview it first and make sure the pingback works. Does it go to the right location? If not, delete the URL and insert the correct one.

Once you are happy that your pingback is working, publish the post.

Only create pingbacks to blog posts and sites that have a connection with the subject of the post you are publishing.

Advantages of having pingbacks on your blog posts.

Creates traffic to your blog.
They are SEO friendly.
Blog posts that include pingbacks are ranked higher by search engine optimisations (SEOs) such as Google and Bing.
Bloggers, whose blogs you link to, may link back to one of your blog posts.
They are a great way of promoting older blog posts you have published.

Warning – never create a pingback to the home page of a blog or website. Why? Because no notification is sent to the blogger whose post you are linking to.

Some experts recommend not allowing any pingbacks or trackbacks to a blog because they attract spam. However, by moderating all pingback notifications, you can prevent any spam pingbacks from appearing in the comments section of your blog posts.

Where possible, try and include at least one pingback in every blog post you publish.

You can use a mixture of pingbacks to your own posts as well as those of other bloggers. However, don’t have too many on a blog post as it can make them look messy. My recommendation is to have no more than one pingback for every 250 words in any post.

Pingback problems

One of the reasons why I changed to using the Gutenberg editor is that I was having lots of problems with pingbacks not working on the Classic editor.

Even today, I see lots of bloggers asking readers to also leave a link to their post despite a pingback being created to it.

I’m pleased to say that since changing to the Gutenberg editor, I’ve not experienced any problems with any of my pingbacks not working.

An invitation to create a pingback

If you’ve never created a pingback before, try creating one for this post. I’ll be happy to let you know if it’s worked and to include it in the comments section if it has.

If you encounter any problems creating a pingback, don’t hesitate to ask me for some help.

Do you use pingbacks, and how often do you use them? Have you had any experiences where pingbacks did not work?