Do forum signatures still count when done in a non-spammy way?

[Oimachi2]

There are a lot of subjects I'm interested in and need to join multiple forums on a regular basis.

Will putting links in my signature still help? My industry is not that competitive.

I will also make sure to respect the 3/3 rule:

33% anchor (varied)
33% irrelevant text
33% url variations

Forum signatures used to work extremely well, do they still do somehow?

I wonder if my competitors still use that technique and rank high.

The keyword set I'm after is <snip> on Google (dot ca) Candaa
.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 3:33 am (utc) on Sep 1, 2013]
[edit reason] keywords not allowed in THIS forum, per Charter [/edit]

[turbocharged]

Forum signature links have been identified as bad links in many responses from Google when failed reconsideration requests are returned to webmasters. I would avoid these.

[Oimachi2]

Really? Like don't even use them at all?

Should I login to all forums I'm a member with and delete signatures?....

[phranque]

they can't hurt if they are nofollowed.

[FranticFish]

A lot of (the majority?) of forum profiles are dynamic so by changing your signature you update your link across multiple pages. If you use your signature to link to the latest article on your site that relates to that forum's audience, then you can drive new visits to your site every time you update your signature. That can have all sorts of benefits independent of Google, and it's certainly possible that activity on your site helps your rankings additionally.

[Planet13]

Personally, I would nofollow them if they pass page rank.

If that site allows dofollow links in signatures, just think of all the other people who have left spammy links in that forum.

Do you really want to be associated with that?

[jakebohall]

I would nofollow the links if they pass pagerank... and use only the domain name as the anchor text.