useless, only good if you have sites that relate to the webmaster/marketing niches and even then these sigs look like spam since they come on every unrelated post, and there can be hundreds of external unrelated links on a one thread. sigs are good if you have a thread that ranks well in serp and you want to link from it, or you can create that serp rank yourself and include that thread in the link net you're building, but using sigs as is like many dp users use, is useless and can even harm, since you can be posting on threads where keywords like "buy link" appear and then you can be penalized. In the bottom line..it's all about having quality sigs and not the quantity of sigs.
Forums links don't penalise you. They do bring a small benefit in link juice. Not enough to make you rank for anything competitive on Google but enough to move you up a few places in my experience. Yahoo seems to take more notice of signature links than Google but, for my sites at least, Yahoo sends no traffic.
Thank you, everyone. I have had the links removed for about 3 months now. My PR has not improved, and fixing my PR was the reason that I removed them. Many others have seen reductions in PR, but the causes do not involve signature links. I do believe that the "PR algo" has been adjusted (tightened up), because so many have reported reductions from higher numbers, which have existed for a long time. So, I think I am going to put my sigs back, but not today. I want to avoid any unnatural looking surge in AdSense performance. What I got from all of you - 1. You will not be penalized for signature links. 2. Matt Cutts doesn't like signature links, at all, nor mayonnaise, but it doesn't matter here. 3. Google will give you credit for the links. 4. The link juice that you get may be partially reduced, because the links are self-awarded. 5. You will get more traffic, but not a lot more. Does that sound about right? . .
It isn't so much that the links are "self-awarded," as that they are on the same page with a hundred other unrelated links and embedded in a discussion about SEO techniques.
Your PR drop was because Google changed the way it valued those links. It was not a penalization. Repetitious forum signature links will likely only count as 1 very low value link. Google has done the same thing with repetitious anchor text links. If it notices an unnatural number of links with the same keyword or phrase, Google reduces their value to ... maybe that of 1 link? Google does the same thing with site-wide links.
I dont think it is bad ,as one dp backlink will give u lots of inner backlinks.I dont know whether google penalizes it or not?
You have posted very nice question buddy . I was laos thinking if we create new site and but 10+ k post account sign than will this help us . May be we can get some traffic but not the juice .
i think they might give a tiny little of link juice, more for sites that are in the same niche as DP.
If your using signature links for SEO to begin with, you've got some serious issues any way. Signatures = promotion, not SEO!
I can't imagine why it would cause any harm. The page that used to be in my signature has been doing better and better. If Google could tell it was a forum signature, then I think they would program thier computers to treat it as such - just a signature link.
i m newbie (only from since 6 month) but i think signature link help us to gaining pr . becaz some time ago i m do forum posting and then selling signature link. i m earn lot of money by doing this and the reason is for getting work is only and only signature link. that mean webmaster hire me to do forum posting just for signature link. i m also have wallpaper website (link in my signature). i m not have good traffic and wallpapers. but google give me pr1 some days ago. and my link source is only and only dp signature. many people purchase signature link in this forum worth 100+$$$s. if they dont help then why people vest their money. so i can say that dp links help to gaining pr. (cant say about traffic becaz i m get 27 visitor only from since 23 days. )
That's the reason you like them, because they earn you a couple of dollars. You have PR2 backlinks from other sites, it doesn't take much to get PR1. Do a real test like i done, buy a domain and put it in your signature for 3 months so it's only source of backlinks is DP signature. How much would you like to bet your PR doesn't go up?
You do realise that by definition your pagerank will decrease if you do nothing? (all things being equal) As long the total number of pages on the internet is increasing, it will be increasingly harder to maintain a given PR. If you haven't been doing active linkbuilding that might well explain your decrease in PR. (combined with possible loss of linkjuice from some of your backlinks if they haven't been linkbuilding, penalized etc.).
I don't have an authority answer, but - logically - if DP links devalue a website, then everyone could link to their competitors' websites and destroy their business. As the SEO books tell you that, for this reason, links in can't harm you (whereas links out to a bad neighbourhood do) I would apply the same logic to your question. Having said that, we've just been dropped from pr2 to pr1!!