[Designer Karly]

As i'm always looking to improve the SEP (Search Engine Position) of my website, i'v taken a shine to putting a link to my website within my Signature on Forums with a high PR. Will this at all benefit me?

Or does Google/Other Search engines realise it's a forum signature link thus not counted as a quality backlink?

DK

[Pamil Visions]

Designer Karly, on Jan 11 2007, 12:09 AM, said:

As i'm always looking to improve the SEP (Search Engine Position) of my website, i'v taken a shine to putting a link to my website within my Signature on Forums with a high PR. Will this at all benefit me?

Or does Google/Other Search engines realise it's a forum signature link thus not counted as a quality backlink?

DK

Of course they realize it is a forum signature. It may not count as a valuable link (to give you higher PageRank in Google) but, it might bring you other benefits: targeted traffic. You shouldn't post in just any forum, but related forums. Btw: it doesn't matter how well you rank for some keywords if no one is searching for those keywords! You should really focus on what brings revenue for your website and not on SE rankings and PR. Provide quality and both SE and visitors will be satisfied.

[paperclip]

Amen to that. Just keep the visitors coming and the other things will just come with them.

[jbladeus]

high-traffic forums have a higher frequency of being visited by SE spiders so can definitely help in getting your site index more effectively.

[BabyBen]

Might be worth checking if you have a "rel=nofollow" tag on your forum however, if it does your link is ranked as worthless!

[W3Daryl]

This is a great way to achieve links with your desired anchor text. However I always check 1) Is there a nofollow tag (don't both) 2) Are signatures allowed to have URLs 3) Has the topic I am posting on been Cached by Google 4) Does it have a google pagerank (always a bonus). Cheers.

[Expat629]

I have had forum signatures crawled and indexed by Google, which is why my signature here is no longer my company name but my keywords/company description.

Also, when our site first launched, our own homepage was, for a brief time, outranked by an introductory post I made on a high PageRank business forum because I mentioned our company name. Needless to say, I edited that post fairly quickly.

[beatsuite.com]

Yes, it does work.

[declaration_end]

It could possibly add a little benefit, but if it's not from a page or site that is anywhere near your topic area then it doesn't do any good really.

If you had a blog/tutorial site about HTML/CSS or whatever, then having your link in sig on deb development forums would still only give you a miniscule benefit.

[MixCat]

Links in forum signatures are good are drawing traffic to your site. The more back links you have, the more exposure your site has and the more chances you get traffic from them

[Eskymo]

expat - should I change my signature then to keywords?

so instead ofhaving my URL, I could type Fife Web Design?

[Expat629]

Eskymo, on Aug 29 2007, 12:05 PM, said:

expat - should I change my signature then to keywords?

so instead ofhaving my URL, I could type Fife Web Design?

In my opinion, yes. One forum signature won't make that much difference, of course, but it never hurts. When you start putting it at the bottom of your created sites as well, that's when the results start to kick in. So instead of:

"Site created by Eskymo"

You'd put:

"Fife Web Design by Eskymo"

(or something a little less awkward) and link it to your site.

[Eskymo]

I'd not thought of that...I always put 'site by Eskymo' - thanks for the tip.

[Thomas Thomassen]

This is very interesting. I'll keep this is mind. I've so far not paid all to much attention to how search engines and page ranking works.

[Frozen Interactive]

So have any of you noticed significant SERPs improvements through purely signature URLs or have you been doing all sorts of SEO work as well?

[waitetom]

Thomas Thomassen, on Aug 30 2007, 10:24, said:

This is very interesting. I'll keep this is mind. I've so far not paid all to much attention to how search engines and page ranking works.

I have taken a bit of notice of the search engines and I'm sure that they do count signatures on forums which point to URLS.

Cheers

[EggMan]

If you use google webmaster tools you can see that they are taken into account

[Boyles Web Design]

i have got a lot of traffic just from posting on this forum a lot, I have even got a few jobs from it. Put your link in the directory and it will get some traffic from there

[Jmz]

The way I look at it is, all links are good links (as long as they're not spammy). Even if there are nofollow tags there, someone might still find your site through it.

[EggMan]

well that was inspirational

[Journey]

I think to make your signature be effective in giving your site a better ranking, it is best to use keywords that best described your company as your signature.

[DVD-and-Media.co.uk]

As long as you post on topic specific forums related to your industry and then choose threads that relate to a particular product - i.e. make sure you arent doing it on forums totally unrelated to your site.

[ericajoieake]

absolutely yes! having a signature on your every post gives a good effect to your site, especially if that forum got a high PR and traffic! just continue posting I know in due time you will notice the effect!

[websitedesign]

Boyles Web Design, on 13 November 2007 - 03:31 PM, said:

i have got a lot of traffic just from posting on this forum a lot, I have even got a few jobs from it. Put your link in the directory and it will get some traffic from there

Not now you don't ... NoFollow is active here.

Which is a good idea. But I think people with over 100 posts or so should have a followed link. As long as they have something constructive to say to help others.

A little like payback for helping others out if you like.

[lazytycoon]

Wow mega bump.

I think Boyles is referring to the amount of people who are clicking on the links within this forum. SE's aren't the only form of marketing.