i'm building a website and have only been using forum signatures as a link dev. method. but now my position on SERPs are going down, my site's possibly been penalized. any idea if using a single link building method is a bad for SEO?
The key to a successful backlink campaign is diversification. Having only 1 backlinking method will look very unnatural to a search engine's eyes, therefore penalizing your website. However, forum signatures isn't a massive backlinking method, so I really doubt that your website got penalized because of that activity. Just keep creating new, diversified backlinks and your SERPs should rise again very soon. Try blog comments backlinks, .edu backlinks, web 2.0 backlinks, contextual backlinks, etc...
I honestly dont think your rankings are going down because of forum sigs unless you joined 30 forums in one day and they are pointing to your site then yes googles alarm bells will start to go off and get your site into trouble if you naturally add more of the same type of links to your site then ull be fine. If your site is new it might be bouncing around for abit.
It is not bad but not good enough, your competitor is doing better than you in link building causing your ranking drop At the same times, you gotta look back into your content as well
Lifplayer is right here. Even I think in the same way. If you are not doing good with your link building strategies then you must watch out what your competitors are doing and how they are gaining good rank.
Signature links is devalue. We take DP signature links as example, in a thread page you can easily find 40 signature links, the links juice is share with so many members, how much we can expected a traffic or juice to a targeted site? Search engine algorithm is keep changing, some time it bias to editorial link, natural link, social link. So it is advise to have mixture type of link to reduce the risk.
With post-panda Google it is essential to use a variety of link building methods. Even if you were just doing article submission or forum posting, it would be wise to diversify the sites that you post to. For example, if you were just using forum posting, try finding other forums that are relevant to the content you are linking to. But the best thing would be to try other link building methods such as social bookmarking, posting to article directories, natural linking, blog commenting and guest posting. Try as many methods as you can, because stinking to only one could possibly give you the Google slap.
I think your site was not penalized, but probably the link juice for Forum Sigs went down and other competitors had other strategies as well.
I agree to what you have said mate. If you have been involved in building unnatural backlinks then only you can be possibly be trigerred..
Use multiple methods in building links this will look your campaign natural in the eye of Search Engines!
I do not know how to link building method is right for google penguin. but I always use a wide variety of backlinks: Web 2.0, Edu backlinks, Blog Comment from website pages that have at least 3 PR and dofollow, Video Sharing, and Social Bookmarking.
Yeah you are going to need diversification as stated above. This is why my company and many other offer packages with different types of links in them. Google needs to think your links are natural. It is also a good idea to focus on quality links rather than quantity.
try different techniques also, Like one day you do forum, another day you do blog another day you do web directories. In this way you will not get bored. Otherwise you will be bored after a certain period of time. Your serp should not get affected if you are creating sig link in quality forums like digitalpoint.
There are multiple link building techniques, social bookmarking, directory submission, articles submission, forums posting, classifieds submission , use all of them regularly, these will surely help in increasing your position on SERP's.
Forum signatures won't help you much with link building...thy are better as a direct source of traffic! But it's not bad if you use them!
OK, my question is if you have a forum and you want to promote it then forums are good place for promotion of a forum and it is relevant too, so if I am using only one method then I'm not doing anything wrong here? Why to promote a forum on social bookmarking sites where there is no benefit and some people may not give any response, if you are using forums then it would receive good response and Google also wants relevancy....
You have to use the mix of different link building techniques, it would be beneficial for you. Google spiders like the relevant and unique content so you have to spread content about your business.