Forum links are great for free traffic.... I get approx 30-50 visits referred from my DP sig every day... its not bad for free advertising
Yeh i have to agree with John there is no harm in link building using your signatures on forums. It can only help matters
The reason why I was asking is that I have a forum that receives alot of traffic, millions (4.5, 7.5 and 5.5 respectively the last 3 months) of page views per month in a niche that I have built up over the last 3 years. For some unknown reason, I never thought of utilizing the signature links there to build traffic (I know - DUH!) ... and I have thousands of pages indexed, a steady stream of traffic, and personally have a couple of thousand posts in the forum.
I am happy with the forum sig links. cz if it does not give me link juice than i never mind, but it does not harmful that i am sure.
Signatures on active forums like DP is good for getting your site indexed or perhaps traffic but for link building, it does little effort.
I really haven't gotten any visits to my site from my signature links, as it isn't anything that appeals to people here or at another webmaster forum I visit. However, about a third of my backlinks are from my signatures (my site is very new) so I think it at least helps get a start there.
Forum signature is a good way of advertisement most especially new sites, its a way of increasing a site's traffic and good for faster indexing from SEs
Forum posting is useful to link building at some level. But more it's about building traffic to your site and promoting your link among the real people who are realted to your niche most of the time. If you are looking for more backlinks to your site, try submitting to web directories, and nofollow blog commenting areas. This will give you one-way permanent backlinks to your site, in no time.
I am really new here,still havent eligible gotten my signature links, but i believe the signatures link will bring a number of back link to your site.
You can get content backlinks (some may not be quality) and of course you get actual people clicking and visiting your site.