Is it okay just to approve the ping back or is there something else I should be doing?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions G+ community.

• 
  grace jolliffe: <b>Good pings</b>
  I received a ping back notification on my site. Another site (a good site) has linked to and recommended a page on my site. ;
  Is it okay just to approve the ping back or is there something else I should be doing?
  With thanks.
• 
  Iblis Bane: Hahaha, watch the opinions fly... ; In general, I would say yes it&#39;s ok. ; These days, my opinion doesn&#39;t count for much. :D ; Is it a dofollow or nofollow link? ; Is it keyword rich anchor text or plain text? ;
  
  If it&#39;s a good (relevant, credible) site, and a good (relevant and contextual) link, I would still say yes. ; That&#39;s not to say that Google will agree. ; But I don&#39;t believe in living in fear of links, so I still say yes. ;
  
  However I do disclaim all responsibility for my opinion. ;)
• 
  grace jolliffe: Hi well thanks.
   ;Er how do I find out if it is a dofollow or nofollow link?
  Also keyword rich anchor text or plain text?  ;Is this the text on the other site? ;
• 
  Greg Baka: Hi - to tell if a link is &#39;follow&#39; or &#39;nofollow&#39; I look at the code. Let me know if this brief instruction makes sense:
  1) Right click on the page
  2) select View Source
  3) click Ctrl-F
  4) search for &quot;nofollow&quot;
  5) see if the nofollow attribute is attached to the code for your link
  6) if not, then it is a follow link
  
  Also, what do you mean by this &quot;ping back&quot; process? I have not heard of it...
• 
  Iblis Bane: As said, look for rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; in the html of the link . If it is nofollow, it should (in theory) be perfectly safe.
  
  And yes, I mean the text of the link on the other site. ; If it is a &quot;money&quot; keyword, (something you would like to rank for, other than your brand) then the mighty Google might conceivably disapprove.
  
  If it is just the straight link (not inside anchor text) but plain . etc. then that&#39;s also fine.
  
  , it&#39;s just a way for people to be notified if somebody links back to their site/page, and is then confirmed (or not) by the person being linked to.
• 
  grace jolliffe:  ;Thanks Greg I can do that. As for this &#39;ping back&#39; - I get emails saying this :
  <b>A new pingback on the post &quot;How To Create Story Conflict&quot; is waiting for your approval</b>
• 
  grace jolliffe: As far as I can see it is a straight forward link. I would like to learn more about this though as I am slightly unsure. Big thanks to  ; and  ; for helping me.
• 
  Greg Baka: and - Is the &quot;ping back&quot; thing part a reciprocal linking program?
  
  If yes, be careful about doing much of it (IMO). Or make the outgoing links from your site to theirs be rel=nofollow
  
  If no, what&#39;s the point of letting some site that linked to you know that you acknowledge the link?
  
  Somehow in all my years online I never came across &quot;ping back&quot;. Weird....
• 
  grace jolliffe:  ;I never used to get it either but it came in with the latest wordpress update. ;
• 
  Greg Baka: Aahh, it&#39;s a Wordpress thing. I don&#39;t use WP, so that&#39;s probably why never heard of it.
• 
  Iblis Bane: , as far as I know it is not reciprocal. ; It is supposed to help prevent spam links by confirming that whatever was linked to, did in fact originate from the site that was pinged. ; (Not entirely sure what effect it has, I don&#39;t use them.) ; Perhaps gives you the opportunity to contact the linking site and request its removal if its a spam link?
• 
  grace jolliffe:  ;Ah just had a thought. It probably lets us know we are being linked to so that we can take action if we are linked by unsavoury sites. That is useful as I found a whole list of sites linking to mine that I really wouldn&#39;t want. I hadn&#39;t been aware of this until there were quite a lot  ;and it would be easier to deal with the problem one by one.
• 
  Edwin Jonk: From the expert panel in this weeks SEO Questions hangout on air on 01:24:28 into the YouTube video:
  
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• 
  grace jolliffe:  ;Many thanks I found that very helpful.