Ok so here is my question, if you post in a forum and your signature points to your own forum, does this help with being indexed or anything?

Like does it count as a backlink?

The reason why I am asking is because I run a forum, and I was thinking about buying the signatures of some of my members.

Their signatures would point to my site, and maybe this would help?

But I am not the pro here.

Maybe someone could give me some tips.

Chris

I greatly support signature links counting as a backlinks and also getting sites indexed very fast in Search engines

yeah, I have googlebombed myself (unintentionally) using nothing but signature links. It's also my preferred choice of getting a new domain indexed.

Sizzler, how do you do a banner signature?

Originally Posted by colochris

Sizzler, how do you do a banner signature?

Edit your signature and either upload an image or paste the url to an offsite image in the box at the bottom.

Yes the links in signatures do count as Back Links.

Akash

They won't do much for your PR, but they can drive traffic to your site all the same.

Having links in my signatures, and then posting on several forums has really helped my website get more traffic, so i can definately recommend it.

Originally Posted by colochris

Ok so here is my question, if you post in a forum and your signature points to your own forum, does this help with being indexed or anything?

Like does it count as a backlink?

The reason why I am asking is because I run a forum, and I was thinking about buying the signatures of some of my members.

Their signatures would point to my site, and maybe this would help?

But I am not the pro here.

Maybe someone could give me some tips.

Chris

Good Question...
I was wondering about the validaty of helpfulness of backlinks via signatures.

Having links in your signature will help getting your site indexed. Assuming the forum in question is popular enough to get spidered often. Active forums do get spidered frequently so if you have a new site and get some sig links the search engines will probably find your site pretty fast.

They are backlinks, but every link won't carry the same weight. They'll generally show as backlinks when you do a link: search, but don't assume all are going to be seen equally. With links think about them in terms of a link = a vote for your site. That's very simplistic, but bear with me. How many votes should any one site get? It would be better to have 10 links from 10 different sites than 10 links all from one site. There are certainly other factors involved, but the idea is that while you may have 500 posts and thus 500 signature links each of those 500 links isn't going to carry the same weight in how well your pages rank.

Chances are after the first one or two every additional link will begin to lose weight. That doesn't mean you shouldn't use them. If you're targeting a less than competitive keyphrase you can probably rank #1 just because of the anchor text you use in your sig links.

Dustin, I'm guessing the Googlebombing you did wasn't for a very competitive term.

The links in your sig do help, but just don't think they'll be as good as having links on a variety of sites. The easier a link is to get the less value it generally has. Sig links are obviously easy to get. That doesn't mean they don't count, but don't expect them alone to make a big difference for competitve keyphrases.

However sig links are still good for their own sake. If you write quality posts, become part of the community, and help people out or raise interesting questions then people will click on your links. They'll be curious about you and want to know more. I get a pretty significant amount of traffic from my sig links here and in the other forums where I post. I've even gained new clients who first found me through a forum post and my signature link.

Not every link needs to be for search engines. Links can be very beneficial on their own. The key with getting traffic from forums though is to become part of the community and add something to the discussion going on. If all your posts are 'me too' in a single sentence then don't expect much traffic. But if you really become part of the community you can expect some traffic daily through the links in your sig.

I don't use sig links for the purpose of backlinks, thats just an added bonus.

Sig links can bring a significant amount traffic to your site as long as your invloved in forums that are targeted to your niche and you can offer quality content.....

Agreed. If you get any backlink benefit it's really just a bonus. I'm sure there will be some benefit with backlinks, but again it's not going to be as much as you might think based on the number of your posts.

Sig links can drive a decent amount of traffic on their own though.

I really appreciate this discussion because I was wondering what benefit signatures have and also, I have not seen an open and frank discussion about this in any other forum.

Glad we were able to get the discussion going then Cheryl. I think you'll find you'll get more benefit from forum sigs by becoming part of the forum community and having people on the links directly.

They are links and I'm sure they count as backlinks in search engines, but I would think they tend to be lower quality links, because they're so easy to get. I still set them up at any forum that allows them when I join. It's alwasy going to be one of the first things I'll do, becuase it's so easy. But that ease probably means they won't count as much as other links you might get.

Signatures are a good way of getting targeted traffic to your site and also helping you to get indexed in the search engines.

yep they do

It helps a lot in getting quality visitors to your site. It also helps in promoting the link popularity of your site thereby boosting Pagerank.

Good way to attract more visitors. It doesn't do any harm and gives the sites some visability. Also you may make a comment that the SEs will pick up on.

The key to making forum signatures work is really to be an active and valued part of the community. The more you put into the community the more it will give back to you.

I did have positive feedaback wiht my directories site since I started using Signatures links.So I suggest to everyone to use them.