Link farm Signatures Are signatures in forum like link farms....are signatures in a thread considered as link farm that may be penalized by GG
Forum signatures in general carry very little, if any, link love, but are great for human visitors to find you. The basic principle is that a link from a page about the same topic as your site will carry more weight than one from an unrelated subject. Therefore, your healthcare forum will not get a ranking boost from a signature in an SEO forum.
Link farms are sites created for the sole purpose of boosting link popularity/ranking. Google HATES sites like this and things like link buying. Forum signatures are a waste of time if all you are doing is trying to boost rankings by providing useless information on a forum with your link in the signature. I think you would see much better results from posting relevant content on relevant forums and leaving your signature there. Like this thread - imagine you are an SEO consultant or whatever in that field. Posting tons of information on SEO and becoming an "expert" in the eyes of other forum users will generate leads. Relevant traffic is relevant traffic whether it is from the Google SERPS or just a forum. Something to think about.
very good question, i think it recognizes a forum for its original content and constant updates which link farm doesnt have
I was wondering sort of the same thing. Do links in signatures count as a backlink. I got a backlink checker on my page. It doesn't show any but I have been posting on Yahoo and Yahoo shows I have two backlinks. If you want to check the number of backlinks you have, try this page: http://emarketing-strategy.blogspot.com/2007/08/backlink-checker.html
No, forum signatures aren't treated anything like link farms. The may give you much PR juice, but it's a great place to market your services.
Well signature links in DP definitely do. I've checked in at least 3 backlink checkers...had almost 50 backlinks from DP.
So I would say the conclusion is forum signatures will not hurt you, but they will not boost your rankings or PR (& these two are separate from each other). They will however give you traffic for your services assuming you are posting high quality posts on relevant forums.
Remember, Google states that it knows webmasters can't really prevent a site linking to your site. And as with sig links on a forum, its pretty much clear adveritising and probably carries very very little weight since theres so many spread out topics. If you were to post a health link on a health forum, then the link may carry more. But as with this, it will look at it as just a link mixed together on a page with very irrelevant keywords. Thus giving little weight. But yeah, it won't look at it as your site being listed on a link farm.
Link farms are purely pages which contain nothing but links ( they don't even care about the places they link to) The forum does not have pages which consist solely of links. There are replies to every thread, and the thread doesn't consist of signatures alone
No, forum sigs aren't considered as link farm. SE loves forums as they get fresh updated information frequently. I' do believe that sig links helps linkpopularity and are valid links.
I think so too, links in signature counts, but not for a whole lot. On the other hand, if you have a backlink from a linkfarm, you will get penalize. You get penalize for buying links too. Links are best built up organically over time.