Signatures effect on SEO...

I was reading a thread here about this, but you guys didn't seem to come to a definite conclusion. If I bought 20 user's sig space, who each have over 15,000 posts on popular sites, wouldn't that really help my ranking? I mean that's 300,000 links to my site. Or do forum links not hold much weight?

Thanks.

 

Every little bit helps, but you are assuming that every post is indexed, which is kinda unlikely... Either way, it certainly will help. Don't be surprised if you find the posts with you signature link showing up on the first page of a search for your keyword as well..

 

Forums don't hold much credit, because threads rarely get outside linking. The user profile might have some credit and pagerank, but that's probably about it.

 

I see. I was also gonna ask, for the people that do this, do you usually have them e-sign a contract? Or does that get covered in the paypal transaction?

 

I used to never have contacts, but now I do - always, for everything.

 

I saw on many forums that as long as a member don't reach the 50th posts her/his signature link is marked with nofollow...Personally I think there is value for adding your URL to your signature but not for the sake of having the search engines crawl those things. Forum signatures are merely one linkback so one doesn't get multiple backlinks with every post made. Besides, many forums don't pass PR through signature links.
It would be beneficial if one is involved in niche forums related to his/her website. Once you've become a true contributing member to the community and you've written something interesting in your posts, you are bound to get visitors to your website through those signatures.

 

for me i think sig in a forum would help having a lot of sig means having a lot of backlinks and if it is a web page spider would crawl it even doe search sig dosent have that much weight it would still help your site. thats my personal opinion try to ask other people who knows more about it.

 

agree!
forum links are often no followed hence no ranking benefit there.
but yeh, you will get crawled more often.

 

Signature links hold very little value for SEO and buying them is a waste unless its clicks you are looking for.

 

I have experience that it also good affect.

 

The signature links have some value, but definitely not as much as one way links from another site.

The no follow is another thing.

Some forums do not have the retrospective aspect applying to their signatures. And for those that do, you need the bot to re index the page.

 

it help your SERP and also increase your backlinks.

 

It definitely helps. You can even check if your site is placed as a signature in DP, then it will get indexed fast.

 

Even the site uses no-follow site was still indexed. But it just don't pass PR juice. So I believe that links from forums can still help in improving your rankings because links was still indexed.

 

if all the signature links is indexed by google, all of those links will help you to get better serp . all the links will help you with different weigths

 

If the signature is on a page that is not related to your content the weight SEO wise is slim to none.

 

Yep. It definitely helps.

 

Well said..

SpiderMonkey85 youd be better off investing in a good seo service hire them for link building.. or buying some (site related) high page rank links..

But if the person posts alot and has good posts and not just crappy useless posts then people will click them some..

 

You'd be wasting your money since forum signatures in general don't hold any appreciable weight at best and most of them will be blocked by search engine spiders via the rel="nofollow" attribute. The only real benefit would be having those paid links in front of a lot of prospective eyeballs, in which case you better make sure you get the most bang for your buck with some killer and actionable Web copy (text that makes people WANT to click that link).

Actually, I would be surprised if it ranked that well.

Golden rule of business - every time you have money change hands, always have a signed contract in place. Especially if it's favorable to your jurisdiction (if something gets disputed, make them come to YOU).

Most forums have rel="nofollow" inserted into signature links to prevent them from passing on anything, and those that don't are probably filled with worthless threads (and posts) that have little to no value anyway. Some, such as SitePoint Forums, do allow spiders to crawl signature links, but even then, they're still not worth as much as regular pages, especially given the number of outbound links normally contained in threads (versus regular pages).

While it'll help you get more incoming links, it really won't improve your SERPs, at least not directly. It's maily used to get eyeballs to look at the link, and to have them tell the brain to wake up and make the hand move the mouse and click on the link.

It won't get indexed any faster than it would via most other means unless the thread is very popular.

Last I checked, if rel="nofollow" is used, search engine spiders will not follow it, meaning it doesn't exist as far as they're concerned. It's basically a "Jedi Mind Trick" for search engines. ("This is not the link you are looking for.")

But as I said, that's not the case since most signature links are not even recognized as being there, and those that are will be competing with so many other links (most likely) that any real search engine gains will be minimal at best.

 

I've actually gotten a good amount of weight from forum signatures. I am only a member of ONE forum that's NOFOLLOW. All the rest are DOFOLLOW and show up while conducting backlink checks for my website. Some forums have high page rank and are good for backlink purposes.

I don't know where people get the information that forum signature links "don't count", or are relatively valueless, but I can assure you...that's not true.