Does anybody know of the site where they are running a test on the effects of forum sig links? I came across it a few weeks ago. I wanted to follow it and can't remember where the heck i saw it at. Thanks.
could you be more specific? what do u mean by the effect of forum sig links? do you mean how my forum sig links will affect my pr, serp, etc?
I would add direct traffic to that list, but yeah I think that's what flyguy is talking about. I'd also be interested in a link if anyone's got it.
then that's not really easy to check. isn't it? how effective a signature link is depends on the member's forum activity and where the member posts, etc. just wondering how one can perform such a test that involves so many variables to quantify the effect..
My friend had an oscommerce site done by a developer in the Ft. Worth, Dallas area. There was no SEO on site at all. Domain name had been in use 2 to 3 years. In all that time it had achieved a whopping page rank of 1 and was not indexed in Google for main keyword phrase even though it appeared in domain name. I added a link in my signature and with it and one other link from one of my sites got her indexed in Google. When I removed signature link, her keyword fell in the SERPs. It appeared to me to be a cause and effect relationship. Shannon
one thing you have to be careful about is whether a given forum has added an anti-spam signature hack. some forum does this and adds nofollow attribute to signatures of specific postings (short postings or ads postings, etc).
This test looked pretty in-depth and covers about a dozen different forums and controlled pages. It was to see the effect they would have on pr and serps. I'm suprised we havn't found a link to it yet. I thought for sure people would be following it. I'll keep looking and if I find it again I'll post it here.
Forum links work great for me to get sites indexed. I use DP to toss some deep links around sometimes. They also provide traffic if you're advertising the right site in the right forum.
I know 5 or 6 where they have a major effect. This is one of them. Most forums help a little bit but not too much.
I found this site: http://www.internet-search-engines-faq.com/forum-signature-links-pr-serps.shtml But couldn't find the results. MikeDammann, that site seems to be run by you. Did the study have a conclusion?