Does having signiture in forums any good for backlinks, as the forums dont tend to have any pagerank?
Some do have rank and add a little to your site. It also can get traffic to your site from people looking at the forum.
I click links in peoples sigs just because I am curious as to there sites and activity. Though it doesn't have a huge impact on your page rank, it does how ever add some back links.
The impact in SEO seems to be different regarding the SE. Google seems not to bother much analysing the content of forums to retrieve your backlinks from there. Yahoo does, depending on forums. I see the question differently. Even if it doesn't create a backlink in SE, the fact you post on a forum is a good way to get known and additionally for your site to be discovered (if your site is related to the forum of course).
Forums do have pagerank. If a thread is popular and is linked to from many blogs and sites, it can gain pagerank. They are backlinks, and they do count in their own little way. You also get targetted quality webmaster traffic by advertising in people's sigs
*BING BING BING* WE HAVE WINNER! gr8liverpoolfan is correct on all points. Though I'd like to add that Sticky threads can also have PR as they are on the first pages of the individual forums index. I would also like to point out that in many cases it's much more then just putting your link in your sig. A quality poster will find they have a much higher CTR then your average post whore just saying "I agree". Also, getting your links into posts can be very beneficial, especially if they have something to do with the individual thread. For instance, this page: Forum Link-Building used to be in my sig, and got a bit of traffic, though posting it in this thread will likely be a one up for the cause, as its on topic here, and IMHO, worth reading All in all though, even if there were no PR perks, the free promotion of sig links is in many ways much more effective, as those clicking your sig can then link to the page if they find it worthy of sharing. Quality has to count for something
Traffic-wise, DP signature links last month sent me 76 visitors viewing 190 pages. PR-wise, Yahoo! Links shows at least one PR3 link to my site from DP. (And tons of PR0 ones )
Interesting facts in this thread. Yes, the link in my sig has gotten me a lot of activity to my forum as well..
Forum backlinks are pretty good and effective to tell you the truth, if you have a good anchor text which attracts people, users with similar interests will check out your signature link. Also a forum with a high index PR will have high PR on older threads, which as someone said before gains PR from (1) being linked to by many sites including social bookmarks, (2) from generally being old. If you appear on the first page of these threads than it's even better as you share more of the link juice. But I think the most appealing thing about forum signature links is that people have a genuine interest in checking out other people's websites - I know I do. A lot of people find success in buying signature links, why not give it a try?
I have been surprised at the popularity of my signature. Not in this forum, mind you (dont have one yet), but in other forums. It doesn't take much to atrract clicks, you just have to use your imagination. Plus, if you get backlinks to your site, that is just icing on the cake.
thats what I always thought, if google indexes a page, it surely counts links on that page. Isn't that how new sites build pr anyways by internal linking including inner pages that dont yet have PR.
From my experience with several sites, you definitely get traffic from links in sigs, and you sometimes also get PR from them. But it is a slow process and topic links right inside the posting text work much better (provided they are relevant!). Rainer