Forum Signature Questions

First very quickly, DP is now showing my link in my signature for all subsequent posts that I'm making, will it also show in older posts made before adding the signature?

Also, is there a way to know how many posts are necessary before you can include a signature?

I was wondering about how search engines construed the inclusions of links at a place like here at DP?

Obviously this is a webmaster forum predominantly, yet people include links to their dating websites, etc. Although DP is an authority site, dating services are completely unrelated to marketing or web development, so does this link count as being valuable or would it hurt your rankings as its not relevant to DP's point? Thanks!

 

Not sure about the latter questions, but if the little "Show your signature" box was ticked when you made the old posts, your new sig will show.

 

Here is the signature and live link guide lines.

http:// forums.digitalpoint.com/faq.php?faq=signatures

 

Do links in the sig really help?

 

The search engines don't give forum signatures much weight. For one, most of the post pages are PageRank0. Secondly there are many other outgoing links on each page and throughout the website. The irrelevancy factor does also apply. I don't think irrelevant links are penalized. I just think they count for a lot less than a relevant link. It still sends a bit of link juice and some possible direct traffic. Of course you would be best off focusing on forums that match your niche, but I'm not one to talk with my credit card signature links. I guess in time I will change those to more of a seo/webmaster topic.

 

forum sig won't raise your PR most of the times, however it can bring decent traffic to your website.

 

10 posts + one week membership

 

I think DP won't show signature in your first few forum posts. It won't show mine.

 

Thank you so much. This answered my question as well

 

I think the old posts will show sig if their were build again , for example,someone reply the thread again!

 

If forum posts and siggy links don't have much significance, then WHY does Google count several hundred links from DP as part of my link count?

That is one of the big ironies I'm trying to solve.

 

you can see what threads you posted in by going to the UserCP.

it does show up in the old posts.

now my question is that are signature links counted on each thread? or does google and other search engines see only 1 link?

 

see dp help

 

Yes your sig will be shown to previous posts also.

 

What does it hurt to have the links in anyway? If you get a little juice - better than nothing.

 

ok, i just did some google searching and i think i found the answer.

only 1 link counts. doesnt matter how many post you have.

 

One nice advantage of signature links in a high-traffic forum like DP is quick indexing by Google.

About three weeks ago I added a new page and pointed a number of links at it to get it indexed. Well, Google ignored it for those few weeks. Then I put that page in my DP signature and it was indexed within 24 hours.

 

The signature link would begin to show up from the day, you have it activated in your USER CP. All subsequent changes in your signature space would get reflected in all your posts starting from such activation.

Regards,

RightMan

 

DP won't show the signature links on your old posts which made before your signature was activated.

 

When you use your signature as links in this forum your site get crawled faster. Good way to get your new site indexed by google quickly.