Does it matter if your signature has the specific keyword you want to build on your website or are the html links in the sig the only think needed to create the backlinks? So for instance if I want to get ranked higher for "Make Money On Ebay" do I need my signature to say "Make Money On Ebay"? Thanks in advance. -Patz
So the "Try it Free" that I have linked right now to my site would not be as good as if I linked to "Make Money on Ebay" or am I misunderstanding? -Patz
Yes. You need to make the text, (Anchor Text) the keywords that you are targeting. Text with phrases like "Try it free", "Here", and so forth are links, but no anchor text that will help at all.
so if my target is once again "Make Money On Ebay"? this signature would be better? I want make sure I have this straight. Thanks for the help. -Patz
Thanks, that helps quite a bit. So from what I understand the best strategy is to post on PR 5,6,7 forums as much as possible as long as the forum posts are relevant to the discussions taking place and useful to the board. And then when spiders crawl this site or mine they will find those signatures and view them as backlinks and push up my rank on natural search results. Is that right? -Patz
Exactly! Just make sure the forum have DoFollow signatures. You can easily check it with this Firefox extension: http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/
Anchor text for the keyword is obviously the most important thing you need for ranking for that keyword, hands down. THis is SEO 101.
Now will have the 2 additional links to "Try It Free" in my sig.... do those a) do nothing for me b) hurt my ranking for Make Money On Ebay c) help me in some small way? Thanks again for all the help. Ive concentrated so much on paid search I havent learned the organic search ropes yet. -Patz
a) slightly better than nothing b) won't hurt anything c) as I said, it's slightly better Don't waste your time targeting "free" as a keyword
Having a specific anchor text is very important.... a regular link will work, but you wont get nearly as much benefit from it unless your keyword is in the anchor text of the link.
Basically by having a certain anchor text, you make Google understand what is this site about and that helps for SERP.