Does linking your site in forum signatures work?

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Nathan

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When you put a link to you site(s) in your signature on various forums, do you think it works?

Does google and friends really look at those links and determine they are referal links or do they just see them as forum signature links?

Has this form of advertising worked for you?
 


It probably doesn't do a whole lot search engine-wise since a lot of forums only show sigs for people that are logged in I think...

but it's like word of mouth traffic. It does work to a degree and it's a one-time bit of work you do. Obviously the more active you are and the more popular the forum, the more exposure you'll get
 
I agree with Payton. The more active & valuable you are as a member of a community, the more attention your signature will get. I bet Jon is getting a good deal of new users from his sitepoint signature, for example, as well as some other known members do for their own sites, compared to a new forum member that just came in and is promoting his average small site.
 
join a forum, make 1000 quality posts, be active for 1 year, by then everyone will know you, and if ur a valued member ppl will gladly visit your site :P
it's what i'm doing on this forum right......now. :)
 
If you are a post whore like me on tons of websites, yes it can work. Not for search engines though.

Although, I've yet to put anything in this sig.
 
sitepoint hides forums signatures to guests (and that includes search engines).
links in sigs can work for search engines too, allthough it's very hard, because most forum software as a huge amount of links on each page so the link power that flows out of a single link is very tiny, but it works well if you can get a substantial % of pages from a forum to link to you. Google seems to filter out these links way more then MSN and Yahoo though :(
 
I get some decent traffic sometimes from a sig ona busy site. All depends what it is and if the anchor text is juicy enough to draw a click
 
I'd say it depends on the forum. On webmaster forums you will definitly see a lot of clicks because theres many people looking for ideas from anothers (thats what the forum itself is for).
 
Dave said:
join a forum, make 1000 quality posts, be active for 1 year, by then everyone will know you, and if ur a valued member ppl will gladly visit your site :P
it's what i'm doing on this forum right......now. :)
Click to expand...

1 year, eh ?! More like 1 week, judging by the current pace... ;)
 
It doesn't take much. If its allowed, do it.
If it shows up when the SE search it counts as a link to your site and hopefully will raise PR.
 
I started a site I started two years ago which I linked to on my sitepoint sig. I was curious if I could actually make money with adsense from a webmaster audience.. in short, no.

As for the SE element I've never tested it. Someone should start a site and solely send links to it through forum sigs to get an idea.
 
I've never had much luck with getting traffic from a sig. A few clicks here and there sure, but I found more value in using it as a method of building backlinks, provided the forum and website match in content.
 
Well they don't have nofollows on them, so they "should" count for SE's. But I'm sure the big players can tell that they're sig links, but still better than nothing. As everybody said, the big gain is the social aspect of it.
 
donn said:
It depends on the forum.
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Yes, I was talking about this specific forum. I wasen't replying to the poster above.

I think it's safe to say that most forums don't have nofollow in sig links as many webmasters haven't even herd of the tag. I've only noticed it on blogs and seo-based forums/sites.
 
i would say yes because if you make your sig stand out in way that people would want to say ''hmm let me check out this site'' well then you get your visits.
 
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