Links from forums - how is the quality of the links?

worth it or not?

[directwheels]

How do you feel about links coming from forums? Most of the ones I get are very contextual and relevant. But I am not sure how they are in terms of quality.

Forum posts typically don't get many external links, and they barely get internal links, as a post gets older, it get further and further away from the site's homepage. However, many forum sites are authorities in their fields, but since there's no way to get links from homepages or sub index pages, I am wondering what people think of getting links within forum posts.

[piatkow]

I would only link if the site was relevant to the topic of the post.

Anything else looks like spam to the forum moderator and to other readers. I am well known enough in my field to value my reputation more than a handful of clicks or the outside possibility of making my number 1 Google slot slightly more secure.

[martinibuster]

[webmasterworld.com...]

[bwnbwn]

I think it is a great way to get links fact is I get a good deal of traffic from forum links. I din't add them but they were added by other members. I don't spam boards but they are a great traffic generator and send quality traffic if the link is on a forum in the vertical.

I think they are a natural link but don't add them myself and really don't know when they are added till I see a referral and follow it to the source.

My answer if not for search engine rankings but generating traffic that might convert. I link for one reason and one reason only quality traffic.

[directwheels]

right, i understand that they bring quality targeted and relevant traffic, but i guess i didn't make my question clear: how do search engines view these links and how much do they affect rankings in Google?

[martinibuster]

All links are pretty much judged as any other link. Because it comes from a forum doesn't make it more or less valuable.

Some threads are informative and are linked to from other forums, online newspaper articles, and blogs. Those pages start to rank well. They get more links. Why? Because it has good content, just like any other page on the web. If it has poor content then it's not going to be linked to well and will not be worth as much. Just like any other web page.