Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Is this likely to be worthwhile as far as generating link poularity as well as visitors for my pages?
But as someone mentioned, it can be considered spam. Especially if you just type promotion things like "On www.bluewidgets.com we just have that systems, it's so great bla bla".
Most forums accept a signature and I have seen almost everybody put a sober sentense in their signature, including in forums that I consider of high level and high interest. True some SIG are abusive, but when this happens, the forum is generally of little interest.
I have not used this kind of promotion so far, but as a user I find it perfectly acceptable and sometimes even very informative.
I think that as long as your comment is relevant and interesting, you are unlikely to get complaints or be banned by posting a SIG. It is recommended to ask the moderator (but based on the number of people having a SIG, it is unlikely they will refuse)
Viral marketing books recommend this method (SIG). It brings visitors, and from that point of vue, is not a waste of time.
Back to your initial question, I read often that forum links are heavily discounted in SE, and probably pay little or no role in ranking. So you should concentrate on other linking methods. Articles in article banks seem to have still some value for ranking, but who knows for how long.
Back to your initial question, I read often that forum links are heavily discounted in SE, and probably pay little or no role in ranking.
When you stick to the initial question, we are in agreement. ;)
Reasons why forum posts are not link development:
1: A link is supposed to be a vote for the website. A forum sig is not a vote.
2: Google has a history of trying to determine what is and is not a vote. They are good at it. I am certain that forum sigs either do not count, or else they are so dampened it's close to worthless. Remember, just because something shows up as a backlink in a backlink search, it does NOT mean it actually counts to ranking it.
but something like this:
q: has anyone used acme widgit cleaner with blue widgits?
a: I wrote a short article on the best way to clean blue widgits here: mydomain.com/link
I realise that this is probably going to be considered spam by many, and also since it is frequently abused it is most likely not appreciated by forum owners, but the question remains as to whether it is effective.
Agreed, but the other engines aren't so good yet. And I haven't seen it "hurt" anything in Google (provided you don't have 50,000 backlinks from said forum).
>>>spamming
All depends on how you do it. If you sell flowers and are posting on a gardening message board - good quality posts - on a forum that allows signatures, no one is going to considering your posts spamming. There is a huge difference between making one post spamming your site and being a long time community member who knows a lot about the subject at hand and contributes good content while giving themselves a link. But, then again, you may get some foot traffic as well.
Those who have been long time posters at *this* site can probably tell you they get some clients by posting useful information here - even though the only link you can have is in your profile (not the guys pushing widgets, but the ones offering SEO related products). Not to mention that someone else could happen upon that gardening board and find your site and end up citing it somewhere else.
IMHO, it all depends *how* you do it. I've seen lots of linking tactics useless when done wrong and decent when done right.
Is that to say you should build your business around posting at forums? Certainly not. But, saying they are *completely* useless in link development is something I'm not ready to agree with. ;-)
You can do it, and be called a spammer by tons of folks, especially if you sign up as a member and your first posts are spamming for your site. I wouldn't recommend that path.
But the kind of forum post links that probably will be the most help is those by people you don't know who post a link to your site while talking about some topic related to your site. I'm talking about posts by people who have nothing to gain by posting a link to your site other than sharing information. Links like this can help.
There are some almost imperceptable lines drawn in the sand about this stuff. Here is another thread worth reading about professional forum spamming [webmasterworld.com] from a while back.
Do any of these links count as link development?
If the page can be crawled, if the links are not using rel=nofollow, and if the SEs give credit for links from that site, well yes, they probably do count to some degree or another. How much is anybodies guess.
Is it worth it?
Each webmaster has to answer that question for themselves.
I've got other stuff I'd rather work on, but I'm glad to get most of the links other people post to my site.
These I believe are of some value as they tend to be on topic, occur only once (ie not a signature), have relevent anchor text and there is no connection at all between any of them
I think it's simply bad form to jump onto someone else's forum for the sole purpose of engaging in shameless self-promotion.
I get pissed at all the spam comments and trackbacks I get on my blog. And don't think that people are so stupid that they don't realize "Great post!" with a link back to your Viagra site is nothing but spam.
