Hi guys,
I was wondering if it can be a problem to have a forum signature with a backlink to a website. For example, I see some people here on BHW having a banner with a link to their blog in their signature. How will Google perceive this? Can't this cause problems (looks spammy at times I think)?
Also no matter what, but google usually not highly evaluated the link between the signature because it is not natural.
Having, signature is just acceptable but having a banner in the comment box is just unaccepted. I am sure they will start to remove it once Google sends them notice :D
You can have link in signature bur placing banner can be a way to get attention but it not looks good.
It is allowed as long as you're posting genuine comments.
Don't try to post spammy comments.
It is one kind of back link generation process in forums. If you post signature with spammy commnet that clear intence to generate back links is consider as a spam.
Well @James_28 Do you really think that signautres with banners are that much helpful? I would rather prefer them to be flagged as spam.
@topic starter; I would strongly advise you to google nofollow links. By understanding the multiple types of links that a webmaster can use you'll get part of the answer to your question.
If you were to run the mozbar (on FF); there is a great little tool which Highlights links and text. By activating this tool you can see: Followed links, NoFollowed links, Internal links, External links, and keyword highlights. Why is this important? Well I'd suggest you head back to google and study link building and specifically link structures.
Spoiler Alert
What you should learn is that every webmaster wants to obtain followed inbound links (the holy grail of inbound links). This is because when SE crawlers know of a page and they begin recrawling it they look for updates to the page including new links. When they see that a new link is added they follow that link (unless its nofollowed); they keep following those links until they in theory crawl your page and ultimately the whole internet.
The more links to a website the more it tells the SE crawlers that the website is more popular (hence the importance of inbound link building). So what happens when they hit nofollowed links? Well they still record that link they just wont follow it to its destination and it will barely take that link into account in scoring the quality of a webpage/website. However enough nofollowed links and those too begin to add up to your website's overall SERP weighting.
So now that you have a quick overview of how links work in the SEs eyes lets go back to your original question. If you were to use the mozBar tool and study your google webmaster account you'd learn that Daniweb gives you a single followed link on your profile page. You'd also learn that each of the web addresses in signatures is flagged as nofollowed links (remember they still carry weight, even if its incremental). By keeping forum signatures as nofollowed links, this keeps the forums and their links from looking spammy by nature. Combine both of these with the fact that with every new topic created on these forums, internal links are automatically generated. This means that the crawlers are kept busy constantly crawling a set of forums. Which also means the more you participate the more internal links that point back to your profile (where your followed link is) PLUS you gain more of those nofollow links which help in a very small sort of way.
From my personal opinion, both forum signature and banner link can be considered as link by google, but not be highly evaluated. Relevant links are very important.
@Gagagugu your post do really seems weird to yo can you elaborate more the line "forums signature and banner link can be considered as link by google but not be highly evaluated" ??
I dont think it will harm the website if the url is used in signature.Having more banner and exceeding the number of links used in the signature can harm the website.
Post for people not for search engines. That is your long lasting theory for continued traffic.
I love how this is a copy/paste of a question asked on blackhatworld.com ... He even says "I see some people here on BHW" ... clearly, he's a black hat person!
If he took the time to realize what site he was posting on, he's notice that we don't show our forum signatures to members who aren't logged in.
Now, as for answering the question, yes, it can definitely be perceived as spammy if you have a forum signature promoting vacation rentals on a tech site, as you do.
However, RELEVANT forum signature links IMHO can do more good than harm by showing you're an expertise in your field and getting referrals from the community.
I think that Google is really down playing forum links significantly though.
Just for those who are curious, here's a link to the "official" discussion on BHW.
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/white-hat-seo/659039-forum-signature-url-problem.html
Great detective work and actually Dani to be honest I wouldn't write off forum links that much. Some of the strongest inbound links we've used are from forums. Actually inbound links from this site have always seemed to be weighted really well; so your doing something right over here and Google seems to like you guys in 2014.
That's because they're relevant ;)
I really don't see anything wrong with posting the same question to more than one forum. Also as one suffering from carpal tunnel my career would be int tubes without the benefits of copying and pasting.
Rick
I see nothing wrong in posting forum signature as long as you are following rules from forum. Also, you made quality post that help to answer people question.
Well, spotted @Dani and to all the memebers, tell you what you feel that there's nothing wrong in posting questions from other forums but tell me one thing if you are running a forum and all the question available over your forum belongs to some other forum i.e. the exact word to word ! Do you think Google will leave you playing this way ?? And what about the quality ? Tell me are other people going to have a look over your forum ??
Plus, it rather depends if you were the person doing the asking origianlly in another place. All too often, cut and pasters and just lazy spammers looking to promote a link...
@Happygeek did I said something wrong ? :( I would say I am not the person copying and pasting the ... :'(
copy and paste is against the google rule of originality.
Google will not bother about signature as long as the comments are genuine and not spammy, But if you spam then google may penalize your site.
Kelly_Burby, nope - my comments was just stating that all too often spammers use cut and paste content as a vehicle for their link payload. That was all. Not aimed at you...
@happygeek Oops I guess I have mistakenly though that comment was aimed ... ! Anyway thanks for letting me know about it. :)
In Blackhat world, They allow Link in Signature
There are many internet forums where you can link to your site. It is also worth participating in internet forums in order to build awareness of your in the eyes of the clients
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