How long does it take for Google to index a new site typically? I'm quite confused because my site is not yet in the Google index yet Google Analytics showed me today that somebody was referred to my site via google using a keyword that returns no hits.

Depends on a few things. How many links are pointing to the site? How often are the sites linking to you crawled? How easy is it for a search spider to crawl the site and find the pages?

Being crawled is not the same as being indexed though. It could take a little time after being crawled before your pages start appearing in the index.

Other issues might be if the previous owner of the domain had done something to incur a penalty for the domain.

How new is your site? You can get a site indexed in a matter of days, but it could also take months. The link in your sig here will help. Forums are generally crawled often so Google should find your link soon enough if they haven't yet.

Weird that Google Analytics is showing you gaining traffic from search results though.

Will links in signatures help with pagerank? I've added links into my signature mostly to get page views.

Forget Toolbar PageRank it is NOT important

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/the-go...important.html

Google Analytics showed me today that somebody was referred to my site via google using a keyword that returns no hits

Exactly why rank checking is also a waste of time. What you see is definitely NOT what other people see.

I think if you will be waiting for google you simple - lost your time. Go ahead and work over

I wouldn't place much emphasis on using signature links for their seo value. There might be some value, but I suspect it's minimal at best.

The way to make signature links work it to contribute to the forum. Help people out, give intelligent answers. If you become a valued member of the community then the community will want to get to know you more and click on the links.

If your goal is to make quick posts in the hopes that more links means more clicks and more love from search engines it won't work.

If your site is not indexed yet go to aboutus.org and fill in the form - an easy link on a site that is crawled all day.

Originally Posted by Gallito

Will links in signatures help with pagerank? I've added links into my signature mostly to get page views.

No. They'll help with page views if you're posting good stuff that makes people want to know more about you. But page views are different (and more important) than PageRank.

Thanks all, I got indexed by Google yesterday =) I assumed that links in sigs had no SEO value, I was hoping they would though =)

Originally Posted by Gallito

I assumed that links in sigs had no SEO value, I was hoping they would though =)

Congrats for getting your site indexed. but i think signatures in forums has seo value if you post useful comments in blogs or forums which have good amount of traffic or which are crawled by google, it could be valued.

Sig links have value, but the value is mostly in the direct traffic you get through the link (assuming you make useful comments)

Their ability to influence how well your page or site ranks is most likely minimal.

Originally Posted by Gallito

How long does it take for Google to index a new site typically? I'm quite confused because my site is not yet in the Google index yet Google Analytics showed me today that somebody was referred to my site via google using a keyword that returns no hits.

Well no one can say exactly how much time it takes. It depends on crawlability of a site. A newer site could be indexed within 24 hours and not even after months. If you want to index your website quicker you should submit an XML sitemap to google......and also submitting your site to social bookmarking sites can also help to get index quickly.