I think sig links are excellent:

1) They are one-way inbound
2) They are visible where humans roam
3) They are posted automatically

Now compare this to posting on most directories or trading for recips buried on links pages.

Ty

I know MSN grabs ahold of them quick, there are a couple of places I mentioned a site I was working on and it was not really up but like the day after I posted MSN had referance to the site.

I just don't think they hirt at all. The worst thing is that the SE is not going to count them. One thing I have learned about sales is give the custom (the search engine in this case) the opportunity to say no.

Originally Posted by Lpspider

How useful are links in the signatures on various forums, such as this one? Does it help you get indexed? Do they count as backlinks? Is it possible for signature links to hurt your website search engine ranking at all?

Really good for traffic.

I think like 20% of my sites traffic is forum signatures, so use it well :-P

I get a lot of referrals from my signature on the Digital Point forum

I'm not positive this is related but the number of listings purchased in my directory went up by 2 or 3 times after I added a link to it in my sig at DP.

Forum posts can be amazingly beneficial to your websites search engine rankings as long as you know what you're doing. The main thing to consider is that you have to actually take part in the online community. Those that just post for no reason may improve their backlinks, but they won't actually make new contacts and become known within the community. Referrals through forums is huge if you really know your stuff.

Yep, they're great!

Best if you get creative with them too!

Another thing we like to do with our forum signature's is change them around from time to time, linking to different pages within our websites that both people and se's may find helpful or interesting. As I mentioned before, forums are great ways to get business. We got a very good lead today from the miva community forums through a discussion about customizing some things in miva merchant 5.

I use forum signatures for traffic purposes.

Links in forum signitures are pretty nifty things. It accounts for a fair bit of my traffic. And also, they can be searched by search engines, so it might be a plus for your website also.

Hi,

I have found that they can help with only a few sites! I have found that they do contribute to traffic but not in large amount but also mostly SEO

-Ipodman-

Originally Posted by GTAce

Signature links are very useful and can be extremely effective if you use them correctly...that's where I got that vast majority of my traffic in its early stages...

I absolutely agree - my latest project (eBay price checker in sig below) is getting the bulk of its traffic from signature links.

However, for the long term you need to build inbound links so what I also do is to submit one or two forum posts with my sig on to Google as well via the addurl page. The theory is that the SE spiders may take a long time to get around to indexing this site so why not give them a helping hand ?

Guess it depends on whether you are looking for targeted traffic to your site or not. Most visits from Forum Sigs will be curiosity clicks more than anything, although if you have a good copy written on your site you can still sell :kiss: