Are signature links on irrelevant forums a potential problem?

[ozsubasi]

I must admit I have changed my strategy along those lines, so that my site is not so reliant on Google. The result is that although it was hit by Penguin and traffic initially nose dived, although it has only partially recovered in terms of SERPs, the traffic last week was higher than for any other week so far this year.

[Technica123]

What I suggest is forget about Google and concentrate on your link building strategies but dont just stick to only one strategy, try and follow different strategies available for link building, and if that includes links from similar forum, dont worry, your other links will push these forum links if Google has problems with them.

[deepsand]

That to me confirms your doubts over their ability to judge relevance, and to give a personal example travel sites and those that deal with retirement issues are relevant to my particular business but they cannot know that.
Although my concern remains that Google perhaps does make unqualified decisions concerning relevancy, even if that is correct there isn't really anything to be done about it.

As relevancy is immaterial to PageRank, the only real concern is re. the target Domain's Link Profile, where, in the absence of evidence of substantial link manipulation, the worst that can happen is that a relevant link is judged to be irrelevant, and thus contributes less than it should.

But, it should be noted that that cuts both ways, in that an irrelevant link may be deemed to be relevant, and affects everyone.

Absent the ability to either know the effects or control them, worrying about it is fruitless.

[C0ldf1re]

... It's great to see you around, Coldfire ... and I think we're getting a little off topic here. The OP is about sig links not forum profile spam. ...

And it's great to be Moderated by you, mj! Please rap me over the knuckles for going off-strict-topic; you rap in the nicest way! But dare651 did have a point; forum profiles give links just like signature links. My own tests echo the results of your Key West travel blog: all links are good links, unless Google has manually targeted them for being a network that Google does not like. (This is a cue for my senior friends, SteveG and WilliamC, to deride my tests as insignificant compared to their big-boy tests. They are probably right; they are experts and I'm still learning.) Forum threads are just like a human conversation... I can talk to a friend about leopards, or quartz, or lemon pies, and, by a process of semantic inexactitude, fuzzy logic, and goal-seeking, he can turn the subject into his favourite football team. Anyway, I was asking a useful question (to some) and Deep gave a sensible answer.

[ozsubasi]

What I suggest is forget about Google and concentrate on your link building strategies but dont just stick to only one strategy, try and follow different strategies available for link building, and if that includes links from similar forum, dont worry, your other links will push these forum links if Google has problems with them.

Thank you, but I explained in earlier posts that I wasn't using just one link building strategy and that I am now looking beyond Google.

---------- Post added at 10:44 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:31 AM ----------

As relevancy is immaterial to PageRank, the only real concern is re. the target Domain's Link Profile, where, in the absence of evidence of substantial link manipulation, the worst that can happen is that a relevant link is judged to be irrelevant, and thus contributes less than it should.

But, it should be noted that that cuts both ways, in that an irrelevant link may be deemed to be relevant, and affects everyone.

Absent the ability to either know the effects or control them, worrying about it is fruitless.

From my point of view that just about sums it up. I would like to thank everyone for their contributions, and to say that I believe I've received enough from the thread to be able move forward from it.

[weegillis]

The member may wish to continue from here, and may do so by request. From what is stated above, this is now a resolved topic. Thread closed.