Pinging back your own posts

Weblog Tools Collection blog is asking if pinging your own previously published posts is a good idea.  Their consideration is the updated Google’s ranking algorithm which decreases the rating of sites to which it has ‘nofollow’ links – exactly the kind that pingback creates.

In my understanding, whenever you have a choice between improved search engine optimization (SEO) and improved user experience, always go for the user experience.  Pingbacks provide a valuable navigation path to updated content.  This is a way for the author to say that there is a development to the story or a much related content is available elsewhere on the site.

If Google, or any other search engine, penalizes such behaviour, I  am more than sure that this is very temporary. Even technically, making an exception to nofollow links within the same domain is a trivial change.

Getting rid of pingbacks to your own posts can and will seriously harm visitor’s navigation of the site.  And that would decrease your page views, incoming links, and everything else that is related to human activity.  Do you still have the question of pingbacks unanswered?