Forum Moderators: martinibuster
You know how it is, join a forum, make a few hundred posts, and then when you are wanting to launch a new site add a signature line to the footer of all your posts. Multiply the results across a few different forums and the results can successfully increase your link popularity.
The question I have is not so much about the technicality but the morality of this approach. Is this really the way people do it? I get really annoyed and when possible avoid fora that include obvious sig line spamming in its content, but with the amount of quality on-topic posts that I have made I am really considering going back to my BB control panels and adding sig lines wherever I can. The thing that has stopped me in the past is that I enjoy anonymity but if the benefits outweigh the down sides then I can no longer ignore this pool of promotion that is now available to me.
Is this really one of the most effective ways to promote a site? If so why do the SE's acknowledge these links as being valid? Surely they should be able to filter this cr*p out or am I just catching up with the way things are?
<edit>For spelling</edit>
[edited by: UDaMan at 9:13 am (utc) on July 27, 2004]
Multiply the results across a few differents forums and the results can successfully increase you link popularity.
Most of the forums that I am a member of have URLs that search engine spiders can not follow:
domain.com/index.php?showtopic=656&st=0&
When there are multiple links coming from one domain such as a forum, a large number of them, if not all of them, can get discounted - because of it being a blatant tactic of artificially increasing your backlinks. I am not saying that this is happens 100% of the time, this is in my experience.
Craig
Most of the forums that I am a member of have URLs that search engine spiders can not follow
Yeah, my thinking is though that most of those links return something other than a 200 OK header (often a 301 or 302) this can lead to the backlinks being registered in the SERPS as valid.
Most of the forums that I am a member of have URLs that search engine spiders can not follow
You have been joining the 'wrong' forums then ;)
I don't really join forums for the backlinks but see them as a bonus :)
Maybe and maybe not. If the forum is related it will likely count.
When there are multiple links coming from one domain such as a forum, a large number of them, if not all of them, can get discounted - because of it being a blatant tactic of artificially increasing your backlinks. I am not saying that this is happens 100% of the time, this is in my experience.Can you show any proof of this?
They would hold more weight and will give you the full benefit of a link.
I don't use a sig file, but G shows quite a few IBLs from my forum posts, but that's from having the Url in my profile.
IMO you could spend your time looking for links from websites that are on topic to your own site. They would hold more weight and will give you the full benefit of a link.
Well I do this as well. There is no doubt that quality non-forum links that I have searched for hold more weight.
consensus seems to be sig files are useless for passing PR/link text.
I really have to disagree on this statement, I have tested the results of adding a sig (all be it on only one forum) in the last 10 days or so. The backlinks are now, today showing up in the SERPS. I am not so sure that they are passing PR or link popularity to my site, but they definately show up in the SERPS using a link:http://www.mydomain.com search.
Well until you are, you can't really disagree with that statement ;-)
Well until you are, you can't really disagree with that statement ;-)
Yes, but the evidence suggests otherwise.
If the forum is related it will likely count.
Even if the forum is related, artifical link popularity is artifical link popularity.
Yes, but the evidence suggests otherwise.
Not trying to be picky, but do you have any evidence that PR is being passed or that the anchor text is having the desired effect.
All was well for a while, untill the last PR and backlink update, when he dropped back to 500 or so backlinks and his PR reverted back to 5. Through a site of my own a similar thing happened at the begining of the year.
That is the kind of info I am looking for, but....
If, say I only had 500 back links at the moment and through signatures could increase that to say 5000 then the short term benefits should be significant. Long term I agree, something else may well work in the future but none of us have crystal balls to predict what that may be. Is this really that effective at this moment in time?
Not trying to be picky, but do you have any evidence that PR is being passed or that the anchor text is having the desired effect.
The evidence I have is displayed in the SERPS for a link: search.
Even if the forum is related, artifical link popularity is artifical link popularity.
That is true, but I would take a look at how well some of the Internet.com link advertisers are doing today. Now tell me that unrelated links don't work...
I know people who have purchased links in unrelated markets and have done well out of it for a 5 or 6 months, but there was an algo shift and they were back to where they were.
The links were up long enough to account for any "sandbox" effect, G does show links from posts in that forum, and nothing else was done, or other links pointed to that third party page during the testing period
Those links and the relevant link text had no effect on the ranking of the third party page.
It'll certainly be interesting if you find different.
Not trying to be picky, but do you have any evidence that PR is being passed or that the anchor text is having the desired effect.I seen sites ranking with just links from forums. I am testing it right now on a site and it has jumped in ranking since the use of links from forums.
Not trying to be picky, but do you have any evidence that PR is being passed or that the anchor text is having the desired effect.
I can attest to a domain whose PR4 was 100% from forum links. Not one honest link. None. 100% forum links. This domain belongs to a WebmasterWorld member.
Ranks in the toilet, afaik though.
It could hurt your site and make you look non-professional, but again most visitors don't even care. I know what it is, but I don't look at every site that I visit backlinks.
