Do Signature Links in Forums

Do you think Google has made it to the point where page/topics relevance means anything when it comes to links? It

 

But if I were Google I would probably try and differentiate between sig link in a forum, which are not votes for pages, but are purely efforts at self promotion, and the links to outside sites. Now I'm not say they are or even could do this, but it would seem reasonable to me if they did.

Sig links are like email sigs. And nobody has suggested that Google should use them.

 

Yeah I agree but I suppose that the relevance of the forum should be "allowed" shouldn't it?

 

I think the relevance of the forum is somewhat played into it. After studying I don't think I get as much benefit from links in these forums as I do on wrestling related forums.

 

All I can tell you is that I saw a number of links from this and other forums show up for some of my sites in yesterdays update. So there is no doubt they are contributing to PR. The question is are they contributing to relevance?

 

that is exactly the point of my post 2 pages ago.
its not the page content...its the authority status of the forum....if it has any.
therefore 'wrestling' or 'injury lawyer' links in a seo forum do make the gravy.
this is no more effective than a viagra site link to your wedding planner page.
it might pass you some pr but not authority value....which i believe is more powerful than pr these days where it counts....the serps.

 

But what makes you believe the theme of the page has any impact? Show me any proof that Google is evaluating anything beyond anchor text.

This claim that you have to have your backlinks from relevant pages has been around for a long time. And I think Google probably tried to instigate something along these lines with Florida. But I think they have abandoned it now. I think the only thing that matters is anchor text.

We have launched an experiment in this thread that will test this idea. We have put up a bunch of links to a page from totally non relevant but otherwise good quality sites. If we can Google bomb this page into the top ten it will establish that anchor text is the main driver and not page theme.

 

Relaxzoolander..

Think about the fact that we are discussing wrestling, viagra, and SEO all on the same page. The spider doesn't go "oh, shoot, this is a SEO forum, I can't go to a viagra link." It thinks, "I see the word viagra 3 times on this page and a link to viagra." So the KW density will also play a role into it. Since the initial adding my links to forums that do not relate to any specific topic of the forums I visit, I have found that my rankings have been increasing for the terms I link with.

 

Does Google have a defined "authority" ranking for sites? I saw this term in another forum too, but have never seen, or been able to find, any solid evidence that "authority status" exists in the Google algorithm.

If it does exist, what the criteria used to qualify a aite as an authority site?

I just don't see how it's possible to define an authority site without human intervention...which claims is not any part of their serps.

 

The discussion about "authority" is based on a search paper called
Hilltop and a Patent that Google took out called Local Rank.

Notice that the person named in the Patent is one of the two researchers who wrote the Hilltop paper. Google hired him and it is obvious that they did so to get at this technolgy.

It is my personal opinion that they tried to implement this and maybe some other semantics and thematic measuring tools in the Florida update. I think Florida failed and they have gone back to simply using anchor text for relevance measuring.

But there is no doubt in my mind that they will refine the tools and eventually be using some of them. So anchor text is fine today, but if you can also place it on relevant or related pages, or authority pages, then you will be ready when Google finally gets all their tools working.

If you are interested in the other tools that have been discussed here is a list.

Topic Sensitive PageRank

Applied Semantics This is the tool Google uses to decide what AdSense ads to place on content web pages.

And Stemming. Stemming is not really about 'authority' pages or the page relevance, but rather about the relevance of variations of the keyword phrase.

There that is probably more than you wanted to know, but it gives you something to read on the holiday.

 

When it comes to SEO, there's no such thing as too much info for me. I'm hooked. Thanks for links, I'll check them out this weekend.

 

Has any one has had good results from paid website marketing. Dont want to pay just to have my website placed on hundreds of unseen sites.

 

it does help, I am seeing backlinks from discussion groups.
/BP

 

I don

 

Could any one please take a look at my site and give me any advise on how to get a better google rating. I would also consider paying to get more hits if any one knows of a good place to do this. Thank you.

 

I know I'm a little late in adding to the discussion, but my website has been just recently launched and pretty much the only links I have going to our URL is from signatures in this forum. My page has links from only a couple other sites and they are my personal site(s) and when I do a backward link check in Google (link:http://www.suchgreatheights.com) all I see is links from this forum. I've also seen them not show up at all. There are about 8 of them usually. My Google PageRank seems to fluctuate but I've seen it at 4/10 2/10 and 0/10 in the past week depending on what PC and Internet connection I use (work, home, friends, etc)

So I guess, for now at least, I'd have to say signature links do "count."

Thanks Shawn!

 

Thats good to see, nice indeed.

 

The only difference between me and #1 is 130 backlinks from an unrelated forum - so I think, at the moment, they do really count

 

The links from the forum do count

The authority of the forum is its size and its related sites' sizes

Theming may have some weight but if the forum is discussing weber bbqs and the link to the related site shows weber bbqs the forum is certainly going to be regarded as having some knowledge on weber bbqs and then the authority kicks in