Hi all, I have a quick question. I'm getting ready to launch a website and, while I've made some before, this will be the first I'm actually putting any effort into rather than just trying things out. Anyway, I have an account on a forum with well over 1k posts. My question is, would it be a good idea to use that forum account's sig line and put a link to my new site in it? The forum has absolutely nothing to do with the niche of my site so would this help at all? Maybe hurt the site? I'm not really up on all of the "rules" the search engines use for such things so I thought I'd ask the experts. Thanks in advance.
It cant hurt the website, as everyone would just do this to their competitors to get them penalised. it can only help. How much it helps will depend on a lot of different factors, but the more links you build the better.
Back links helps a lot for site to get promoted.. but not in short period .. take long time.. so for new site first concentrate on off page optimization and quality of content then add slowly BL ...
Thta's fine to put your website link as your signature. It wouldnt hurt you website but maybe it not give much benefit if it is not same niche as your website
My question is, would it be a good idea to use that forum account's sig line and put a link to my new site in it? It can help, so it's generally worth it... The forum has absolutely nothing to do with the niche of my site so would this help at all? Yeah, but not nearly as much as if you could post on topic. So a search for a related topic within that forum and give your most very bestest reply. People will see your sig and possibly click through for additional information... Maybe hurt the site? Likely not hurt it, though again, as to how much it'll help is really questionable. I'm not really up on all of the "rules" the search engines use for such things so I thought I'd ask the experts. take ALL of our answers with a grain of salt, as NONE of us are experts Most of what we have to say is based on speculation and best guesses and are subject to change without warning. For additional info on sig link building check out these threads: Buying sig links? Read this first! Forum Link Building tips (it's not just your signiture!) Promoting your site by promoting someone else's
If you've already got the posts, you bet your ass that you should take advantage of the signature feature! You only stand to gain valuable backlinks and traffic from it. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that!
Hello, Putting the link in the sig is definitely a good idea for promoting it, but I suggest since its new site you should try out some SEO services (off-page optimization) in order to improve the PR. This will help you in generating back links for your site and give it a boost over all. There are many off page SEO services, some of the most effective one's are listed : * Social Bookmarking * Article marketing * do-follow blog commenting * Press releases * Directory submissions You should make it a point to try out manual services, not automated. Manual services are far more fruitful for getting juicy links. regards sripat
Thanks for all the replies guys! Yes, I was going to use other methods (social bookmarks, blog comments, articles, etc.) along with good old fashioned SEO for the site but I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to hinder any of those efforts by having a ton of links coming from a site that was pretty irrelevant to my niche. Good advice all around though and I'll be putting it all into practice. Thanks again.
Depends on the forum too...if it is an authority forum such as this one, chances are those will all get reindexed and giving your new website credit..but then take away from whatever you were linking to (not sure if that matters)
Backlinks will never hinder you unless they are SPAM links. There's a big difference and Google can tell that. Think about the authority sites that exist...think about Google! How many irrelevant links do they have? A ton, which is my point exactly. If someone is linking to you, then Google figures that your site must have some kind of importance.
Why is it that the "professional" SEO's think forum signature links are useless and do not help; yet the SEO "kiddies" think they are great?
Because they are either writing nonsense within the forum without contributing and the post is not indexed so the sig links value is diminished. On another forum I have over 2k posts but only 1k show up as links. Granted posting on forums shows your knowledge, build relations, as well as direct traffic. If someone is a "professional" or a "kiddie" they should realize forum signatures do work; they just take effort and the right kind of forums or else your just spinning wheels.
Yes, I would cash in on those 1K plus posts. They could possibly trigger a Google filter in the short run, but they will help you in the long run; if you are worried then build some back links to the site and age it a little before you turn those 1K posts signature on to it. -------------------- The place for Food Science Jobs seekers and Food Manufacturing Jobs. | Britt Borden site | Dr Britt Borden
In my opinion, there's nothing to lose. They may not help your site, but they should not hurt your site.
I'm neither an SEO professional nor an SEO "kiddie". I do run a successful website that gets a small (but appreciated) amount of targeted traffic from my Digital Point signatures.
That's pretty much what I was most concerned about is that Google might find 1k links to a new site to indicate spamming or some other shady tactic and would then sandbox the site or otherwise penalize it. Anyone else have any opinions on how likely that would be? Then again, I assume the Google bot is sophisticated enough to know that it's seeing a forum sig link rather than 1k individual links popping up all across the internet, which would probably make it appear to be spam. I may take your advice and build up some backlinks other places first before using that particular forum sig. Unless the general consensus around here is that it wouldn't matter, in which case I'll just put a link in the forum sig and then slowly build up other links.
Of course it's hard to measure the effect scientifically, but I think that forum sig links have helped.
Even though all of those links go live at the same time, it will take a long while before the SE's re-index all of the pages. Its unlikely that the search engines will find them all simultaneously. Chances are, all of the threads won't even get re-indexed any time soon unless they are hot topics with recent bumps. Many of those old threads may never get counted as a link. As long as you're also building up links on other sources as well, I don't think adding the sig will hurt your site at all.