The Value of Signature Links

[galide]

When you think everything is wrapped up, Dave comes in and reignite fire - excellent.

Ok, let's see -

There are members of this community with thousands of links from WPW. What is it exactly that you intend to "demonstrate" by reaching 100?

Is it one of the question?

I am trying to demonstrate that 100 links from a forum cannot damage a site. But also that 1 single link embedded (in the right context) in one of the post is worth much more than 100 signatures posted in the same thread.

I am betting that the page 2 of this forum will bring more traffic to my blog than all the other pages together - easy to check, just need to check my analytics in 1 month time for refferring traffic from this post.

This is not only for fun really. I'll have spent 4h in total (~2.30mn post) if I go up to 100 threads, which could have been used for optimising a site for instance. But if I am right, I will have tested results which I can show to clients or people working for me, in order to avoid them wasting their time on forums if it is just for grabbing links - they are worthless, but the 4h will have well spent to demonstrate that:

1) Links in signature don't have much impact (if all newbies know that, well why do people still use 3 - 4 -5 or more links in their signature, including you?).
2) Embedding a link in a post is worth it
3) The information given by people on forums is very often nonsense, driven by the urge to gain credibility and often taken from untrusted sources. Don't rely on it if you are not familiar with SEO.

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by galide

When you think everything is wrapped up, Dave comes in and reignite fire - excellent.

Ok, let's see -



Is it one of the question?

I am trying to demonstrate that 100 links from a forum cannot damage a site. But also that 1 single link embedded (in the right context) in one of the post is worth much more than 100 signatures posted in the same thread.

I am betting that the page 2 of this forum will bring more traffic to my blog than all the other pages together - easy to check, just need to check my analytics in 1 month time for refferring traffic from this post.

This is not only for fun really. I'll have spent 4h in total (~2.30mn post) if I go up to 100 threads, which could have been used for optimising a site for instance. But if I am right, I will have tested results which I can show to clients or people working for me, in order to avoid them wasting their time on forums if it is just for grabbing links - they are worthless, but the 4h will have well spent to demonstrate that:

1) Links in signature don't have much impact (if all newbies know that, well why do people still use 3 - 4 -5 or more links in their signature, including you?).
2) Embedding a link in a post is worth it
3) The information given by people on forums is very often nonsense, driven by the urge to gain credibility and often taken from untrusted sources. Don't rely on it if you are not familiar with SEO.

No, I'm not reigniting anything.

If you reach 100 posts on WPW then you'll have demonstrated that 100 links from WPW are not going to hurt your rankings. As I pointed out, other community members have thousands.

Links within posts, provided they are in context, are almost unfailingly going to draw more followers than a signature link. They are of interest to anyone following or reading a particular thread, whether initially of from finding via a search.

In the event you or anyone else is interested I made a short blog post some time ago about my thoughts on signature links... Forum Signature Links

As far as my signature links go, one of them gets 16-20 follows daily. Low bounce rate and from a whole variety of pages/posts. So as far as not having much impact, I tend to disagree. The reason for so much signature spam, posting spam, etc. etc. is because folks tend to only consider the potential SE value their signature links *may* have.

Won't disagree that there's a whole lot of inaccurate information in a whole lot of places. I will however disagree that it driven by the urge to gain credibility if you mean it in the sense of solely or primarily. There's a lot of reasons it happens, one being when opinions are blindly stated as fact with nothing at all to support them. Could also be someone trying to be helpful that is simply mistaken with no malice intended. There's also accurate information in a lot of places that gets blindly attacked. The door swings both ways when it comes to this.

If someone is not familiar with SEO, relying on any one source of information isn't a good idea IMO. Neither is automatically dismissing any source out of hand.

Dave <---know this is a bit off topic so if anyone wishes to continue along these lines I'll move the posts to a new thread.

[galide]

Nice post Dave - and I mean it, it is not sarcasm.

As far as my signature links go, one of them gets 16-20 follows daily.

There is one thing you miss though I think.

16-20 clicks/day for the type of sites you have is ~5p/click
=> you would have to spend 5*20 = £1/day = £30/month driving this type of traffic to your sites. If I am now paying someone to post on forums, it will probably be ~£10/h (I said that you are talking a lot of nonsense, but you have some kind of expertise in putting it across, which is not something a "newby" at £5/h can do really).

Now, I suspect that you spend much more than 3h/month on this forum, which doesn't make sense from a return on investment point of view.

So at the end, posting 100 posts on a forum, takes 4h, and brings 20 follows a day? we have to put a bit of page rank value in the recipe, + anchor text but overall, doesn't really justify the investment.

Now, 1 single post bringing 10 follows a day would make more sense, and start bringing some positive return on investment.

ave <---know this is a bit off topic so if anyone wishes to continue along these lines I'll move the posts to a new thread.

Agree, this is off topic. but as I said, the only time I have got is for this post really, so please open a new thread, I think it is worth it, but I'll have to stick to this one until my 100 posts are over.

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by galide

Nice post Dave - and I mean it, it is not sarcasm.

There is one thing you miss though I think.

16-20 clicks/day for the type of sites you have is ~5p/click
=> you would have to spend 5*20 = £1/day = £30/month driving this type of traffic to your sites. If I am now paying someone to post on forums, it will probably be ~£10/h (I said that you are talking a lot of nonsense, but you have some kind of expertise in putting it across, which is not something a "newby" at £5/h can do really).

Now, I suspect that you spend much more than 3h/month on this forum, which doesn't make sense from a return on investment point of view.

So at the end, posting 100 posts on a forum, takes 4h, and brings 20 follows a day? we have to put a bit of page rank value in the recipe, + anchor text but overall, doesn't really justify the investment.

Now, 1 single post bringing 10 follows a day would make more sense, and start bringing some positive return on investment.


Agree, this is off topic. but as I said, the only time I have got is for this post really, so please open a new thread, I think it is worth it, but I'll have to stick to this one until my 100 posts are over.

I spend quite a bit of time here. Personal reasons as well as responsibilities as a mod.

I don't look at the ROI from posting. Anyone who did with regularity would find out that there are far better ways to spend their time in the long run. Besides, I only gave you numbers on one of the links and nothing on conversions. Again though, not why I post.

The links themselves without content are worthless IMO (I'd like the spammers to special note of this). Doesn't matter if their in the signature or in the body. Additionally, the longer the thread, the less apt a body link is going to be followed depending upon where in the thread it is unless it's a "searched" area of the thread. Not many people read through long threads entirely and/or become less likely to do so the longer it gets. Body links get missed.

Dave

[galide]

oh well, let's carry on here, this is more interesting at the end. I don't think it makes a difference if signature links are from the thread or not.

I have got 40 clicks so far from the thread. And keep getting 1/2 clicks/day from page 3 which is the only one now driving traffic. In total, traffic from page 3 is ~50% (20 clicks) of the total traffic.

Also, the link on page 3 is quoted, which I suspect encourage people to click on it.

Cannot really draw any conclusion at the moment, provided the low amount of clicks but I suspect that:

1) You don't have to worry about short or long thread - people find the page through a search in google, land on it, read the actual page, and click on links quoted
2) The best links are quoted links - they outperform any other embedded links, and signature links as well
3) The objective to make a post worthwhile is to get someone to quote a bit of you post, which inlcudes a link.

This kind of makes sense, and figures seem to currently go into this direction.

So I don't agree with

Additionally, the longer the thread, the less apt a body link is going to be followed depending upon where in the thread it is unless it's a "searched" area of the thread

And this

Body links get missed.

Besides, I only gave you numbers on one of the links and nothing on conversions.

I suspect it must be quite low, provided that the type of crowd we have got here is probably not very likely to buy religious jewellery online? The other site you have got in your signature (directory site) must have a pretty low conversion rate as well, with only 83 links at $1 each, worth 4h of work (low paid work at $20/h).

[galide]

Oh, I forgot:

he links themselves without content are worthless IMO

I don't agree with this either. If you take a look at my blog, you will see that the post which have been sphinned (never been sphinned before I start posting on this forum a couple of weeks ago) are posts mentioned on this forum.
=> this type of forums attracts people who use online bookmarks or voting systems, and who are likely to sphinn, tag, digg or whatever your site if you drive them to a post in direct relation to the thread.

So, indirectly, links you post on a forum have an indirect SEO effect, by driving people to link to it from other platforms.

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by galide

oh well, let's carry on here, this is more interesting at the end. I don't think it makes a difference if signature links are from the thread or not.

I have got 40 clicks so far from the thread. And keep getting 1/2 clicks/day from page 3 which is the only one now driving traffic. In total, traffic from page 3 is ~50% (20 clicks) of the total traffic.

Also, the link on page 3 is quoted, which I suspect encourage people to click on it.

Cannot really draw any conclusion at the moment, provided the low amount of clicks but I suspect that:

1) You don't have to worry about short or long thread - people find the page through a search in google, land on it, read the actual page, and click on links quoted
2) The best links are quoted links - they outperform any other embedded links, and signature links as well
3) The objective to make a post worthwhile is to get someone to quote a bit of you post, which inlcudes a link.

This kind of makes sense, and figures seem to currently go into this direction.

I suspect it must be quite low, provided that the type of crowd we have got here is probably not very likely to buy religious jewellery online? The other site you have got in your signature (directory site) must have a pretty low conversion rate as well, with only 83 links at $1 each, worth 4h of work (low paid work at $20/h).

As far as the body link, or embedded link, a searcher has to find the page(s) that contain it. Same if it's quoted. The longer a thread gets, the less likely a searcher is to land on those particular pages for their particular query, and the more neccessary it becomes for them to read more of thread. Ergo, the less likely they are to find it. FTR... I've not studied it in detail.

Conversions... Crowds anywhere are interested in, or can be interested in, anything from T-shirts to pizza delivery. So I tend not to underestimate what someone may be interested in and why.

Dave

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by galide

1) Links in signature don't have much impact (if all newbies know that, well why do people still use 3 - 4 -5 or more links in their signature, including you?).

Well because you get traffic from the links. It helps you brand yourself and your website.

Originally Posted by galide

2) Embedding a link in a post is worth it

Um, sure because it is easier for the user to click a link rather than cutting a pasting a URL. I think you have a little to much SEO on the brain right now.

Originally Posted by galide

3) The information given by people on forums is very often nonsense, driven by the urge to gain credibility and often taken from untrusted sources. Don't rely on it if you are not familiar with SEO.

Well sure. That goes for any forum. It is free advice you know, but you have to hang out at social spots like forums before you get to know who to trust.

[sarpras]

Signature Links provide good popularity on Search engine like google, Yahoo. It also drive good traffic to your blog or website.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by sarpras

Signature Links provide good popularity on Search engine like google, Yahoo.

What is "good popularity"?

[AVC]

My opinion is that they are a way for a forum to reward content contributors for their effort.

Signature spammers have abused forums, this hurts honest contributors, folks are now posting on forums to sell signature links, this is directly against Google guidelines and many of these folks call themselves SEO's.

Signature spamming (and signature link selling) is a cottage industry today, Google understands this fact and they have discounted forum signature links for years now.

Many forums have gone to "no follow" by default on all user contributed links, within posts and signatures to protect their own PR and this makes great sense, especially if forums do not have great moderators watching all the time to cut down and permanently ban blatant signature spammers.

[kevsta]

guys, from what i see here im in the minority on this one, but i actually think forum sigs can help serps quite a bit.

I have aquaintances who have sites powered only by forum sig links, and when they want to target new terms the ability to change one sig in the control panel and instantaneously backdate several hundred sig links in one go, which Google then gradually recaches as they naturally recache the forum provides a good amount of "push" -& building in a steady way.

i have watched this work several times on different sites when there are literally no other links to them, and it would seem to me that multiple forums sigs definitely help. some forums more than others, to be fair.

am also not very convinced about sitewides / footers necessarily hurting much either. at worst I think theyd count as one good link, but Google discounting value of the links for ranking purposes doesnt stop PR flowing does it? which ultimately will still help serps if you get the rest of the site right?

[galide]

Um, sure because it is easier for the user to click a link rather than cutting a pasting a URL. I think you have a little to much SEO on the brain right now.

The best SEO technics are usually common sense really.

I tend to believe that if you get a lot of traffic from a link, which is not "blocked" by a nofollow or javascript, this link is good for SEO. This is common sense. Google tends to take links as votes, and provided that they now have the ability to track a lot of traffic in and out, it would make sense that they take into account the number of clicks coming from a specific URL, and then assign a specific weight for ranking.

This is common sense, but never managed to prove this theory for instance. And I have found that some links bringing not a single click can sometimes have much more impact than links bringing much more traffic in.

[inertia]

Surely forum sigs are not different to sitewide footer links? How would Google be able to distinguish between the two?

I do think that sig links make a difference, in fact I've seen them make a difference. When i added the "Windows XP Embedded Computers" link to my sig i saw the target site climb half a page for the keyword. I'm not saying that me adding the link to my
sig instantly built 300 odd relevant, high quality links but it definitely helped. It also creates 300 odd "pathways" into the site , which is great for them spiders!

I think the weight given to site wide links is reduced but not completely. I also think that many of the factors taken into account with links are still acknowledged. Would a site do better in the SERPs if it had 100 links from Wiki or 1?

[incrediblehelp]

Kevsta I have seen them work well in Yahoo, but not so much in MSN and Google.

[ctabuk]

The ONLY time when a forum link is worth a jot is when it is attached to an anchor text thread and is keyword rich. Which is why my main links are not in my sig.

Now, when you guys twig how to use your forum usernames - then I'd better watch out

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by galide