Could all of you people wittering on about forums links please log out and come back to this page. Now, how many links do you see in posts? Yes, none.

Try this on other forums - most are the same, or they use a redirect script, or the links are nofollow.

So, from search juice POV, forums links are probably useless.

As far as attracting traffic, ask yourself how many times you click on someone else's sig link. Not often, I suspect. That will obviously vary depending on type of forum and degree of interest but I doubt if many of us see more than the occasional visitor from forums.

So why do people keep dropping links all over forums? Because it used to be effective. Then the idiots and the spammers and the auto-post programs arrived and killed it off.

Unfortunately there are so many out there who will pay for "10,000 guaranteed relevant backlinks" that the spam bots keep going. Delete one Chinese "Nike" poster and another pops up with Rolexes. Kill off one Karachi SEO expert and four more leap into the breach.

Originally Posted by maaria143

Nope I don't agreed with that, Links in the forums are very useful and effective to increase page rank of your site in the search engine.

Re-read the whole message, understand it, follow the instructions and comment again,

Good post Paul. I'll disagree with one thing you said though.

I doubt if many of us see more than the occasional visitor from forums.

There are two forums where I'm active and both have sent a decent amount of traffic back to my site over the years. Your success or lack of success depends on a number of things: the specific forum, the quality of your posts, etc. For the people thinking sig links are good for PR, you're right. They aren't going to see any traffic. For people who take the time to create thoughtful and helpful posts they can see traffic.

Of course this thread doesn't exist for the people who create quality posts.

Originally Posted by maaria143

Nope I don't agreed with that

You really should read Paul's post. The forum currently doesn't show signature links unless you're logged in meaning search engines don't know they exist. Signature links here are contributing nothing to PR at the moment.

I created an entire community based off of forum links.

What I did was convince my user base to use my forum avatars/signatures and rewarded them for doing so. Since so many people were advertising my forum, others were interested and joined.

At the end of the day, so many joined and participated that the nofollow and SEO optimization was of no part of my marketing strategy.

Goes to show you that your don't need to have that number 1 spot on google to create a website with hits.

vangogh, agree completely - I was trying to be succinct on the theme of link-dropping - but forums where you actively participate with considered posts can be very different when you've built up respect and trust.

Twirp54 - well done - a marketing strategy put in place and working.

And Paul I complete agree with you on the link dropping aspect. It's pointless, but it's so easy to do and let's face it the people who are dropping links in forums for seo aren't creative enough to figure out how to get a link that actually helps.

If the signature does not have any role in the link? So why Forum also established signature? How can this be explained? If you do not have any effect, I would like to sign or can not be displayed directly shield.

it,s depend on quality of posts.... if you post quality threads and comments you can get lot of traffic from your signature , but if your comments and threads are low quality content you will not get any benefit by your signatures...

So why Forum also established signature?

Because real people click on the links if you create useful and interesting posts. Forums don't add signature links thinking about how they affect search engines. Hard as this may be to believe, not everything that happens online is done for search engines.

not everything that happens online is done for search engines.

and in reality if you did nothing at all especially for search engines, your pages would quite probably fare better.

Depends on the forums, some are very worthwhile and others are not. What is worthwhile, is keeping your interactions limited to relevant forums for your industry and niche. Google likes to see that your site/blog is interacting with your community.

Google doesn't "care" whether you or your pages are "interacting" with the community.

PEOPLE may do but Google certainly does not. Why does every one anthropomorphise the google indexer, it is driven by mathematics and logic not by senses or feelings.
Relative to a search engine means connections. document 'A' links to document 'B' therefore 'A' is related to 'B'.

They don't understand that shoes, handbags and earrings are related or that hats and weddings are, or trimming knife blades and elastoplast (band aid) are. Forum signature and links are for promoting your pages to the people who read the forum pages.
Pretending you are an "expert" at SEO with a link to Y.A.I.S.E.O. website in your signature while asking "Does META tag is use for SEO" isnt winning any fans for the company you are being paid to drop links for.

I don't understand your post given that you have 3 links in your own signature .

A rather white hat way to look at anything you do online, if search engines didn't exist would I still do this? In the case of forums of course you would.

If you post regularly with useful content, forum viewers already have a relationship with you, they click your link, you give them what they want and build a stronger relationship...and so on.

Originally Posted by dancorkill

I don't understand your post given that you have 3 links in your own signature

Hope over expectation in this forum.

Originally Posted by dancorkill

If you post regularly with useful content, forum viewers already have a relationship with you, they click your link, you give them what they want and build a stronger relationship...and so on.

Alas, not round here. There are a few posters who are clearly expert, who post based on knowledge and experience - they're distinguished easily by the fact that they read posts before responding - if people here read a few of their sig links then 80% of posts would not be made. That does of course beg the question as to why many people come to certain forums here - I think it's to be confirmed in their misbeliefs - "I have SEO expert in my sig. I tell people to do certain things. Chris Hirst has a page which demonstrates with proof the fallacy of much SEO-speak including what I tell my customers. I know this because he has mentioned it in a post. Reading that page would require effort and understanding and would necessitate me changing what I tell my customers. I am an SEO expert (it says so in my sig). I will not read Chris's page or his sig links lest darkness descend upon my soul and I be lost."

Originally Posted by Chrishirst

and in reality if you did nothing at all especially for search engines, your pages would quite probably fare better

Isn't it amazing how much search traffic you can get when you don't worry about what search engines think?

Originally Posted by dancorkill

I don't understand your post given that you have 3 links in your own signature .

Yep and they change from time to time as well. I like to test things rather than peddle fifteen year old, fifth hand "advice", and forum signature links are one of the thing I test.

Originally Posted by dancorkill

A rather white hat way to look at anything you do online, if search engines didn't exist would I still do this? In the case of forums of course you would.

I've been posting on bulletin boards, newsgroups and forums since the early 1990s, before search engines ever existed and your signature identified your interests rather than something you were "promoting", so having a signature with a current project or something you hope people will read in it is no big deal.

Originally Posted by dancorkill

If you post regularly with useful content, forum viewers already have a relationship with you, they click your link, you give them what they want and build a stronger relationship...and so on.

Sure the marketing and promotional value of links, which is their main purpose, is not disputed.
Hopefully some of these numpties will realise that Search Engine Marketing means Marketing WITH search engines rather than marketing TO search engines.

Originally Posted by Brenda243269

It this is funda then why you have put links .

And in English that means??

Links are really useful.
it helps to receive very big amount of traffic

Originally Posted by chrishirst

And in English that means??

mental

yes i theres some webmaster forums, that will work really. I have seen from my dashboard i got incomming link from those forum.