Linking to my site from a major forum

will that be helpful for SE ratings?

[Sorry In Advance]

I'm a member of a -very- well attended forum, and post regularly. It's not a forum related to my business.

In my member profile I've put keyword-rich information about my site, and the services I provide.
I've also invited people (politely) to help me out by viewing my profile and maybe clicking on the links, or doing a google search and clicking on my site.

I have even submitted my member profile page to google.

Will this improve my rankings in any way (if people do actually look at my profile), or is it just completely daft and possibly damaging to my rankings?

As I have said, I am a contributor to this forum I mentioned, so it's not blatant spamming.

I just wondered if that has potency, since this forum we're on just now seems so keen to <snip> out website addresses to stop spammers.

Please note, I'm not very 'up' on how Google works, so don't laugh at me!

[mack]

Posting a url in a profile can be a good way of getting people to click through to have a look at your site. From a search engine point of view, it may or may not work. To be honest it really depends what software the forun is using. Many forums use redirect url's within profiles so in reality the search engine wont even see the link let alone give your site credit for the link.

As for <snipping> we like to keep the forums as noise free as possible. By doing this, questions become very generalised and usefull for many users, as opposed to a few. :)

Mack.

[Sorry In Advance]

cool, thanks for the reply Mack. I see what you mean about the snipping: seems to have a positive effect.

How do I find out whether the forum is using redirect URL's in my profile?

Also, is there any distance in submitting other people's sites to google (who link to you) or is that bad netiquette?

[mack]

The best way to look at it, is it wont do you any harm. Very often people look at links only from an se point of view. If the forum in question is popular you will receive good click throughs.

Mack.

[MichaelBluejay]

[quote]How do I find out whether the forum is using redirect URL's in my profile?[/url]

If the link to your site is normal (e.g., [yoursite.com),...] there's no redirect. But if the link to your site looks something like this: [TheirSite.com...] then they're using a redirect.

[Sorry In Advance]

thanks Michael.