Alright so say you got a profile on a few sites with a couple hundred posts on them. Do each signature post count as 1 back link or does the site by it self is just 1 back link (minus all 400+ posts) or all 400+ posts count as a free backlink?
Couple of points: 1. Multiple back links from same site (many believe even from same IP) has less impact on SERPs / link popularity / PR. 2. Forum sig links have very less impact on SERPs because a forum page typically will have more than 10-20 posts with each having 2-4 sig links. That's a lot of outbound link from one page. So to answer your question: It won't be as good as 400 backlinks from 400 different domains / IPs. It will be slightly better than having only one backlink from the forum
That wasn't the question at all, the question was, (disregarding multiple posts per page), will multiple page signature backlinks count as 1 back link per page, per post.
I think I answered this question.. Yes they are 400 backlinks. but having 400 backlinks from same site is not as good having them from different sites.
400 backlinks from the same IP are not so strong as 400 backlinks from different IPs. But depending on the forum, they can bring you traffic, PageRank, and some good targeted backlinks(if you sig links are relevant)