SEO89: Impact of non clickable urls in forum signatures

[weegillis]

This is not an SEO topic, per se, but a forum policy discussion relating to ANOTHER FORUM, not this one. A URL is always a URL whether a link is attached or not. Just hilite any text URL in Chrome and right click: Go to example.com. If their browser can distinguish a URL in a body of text, then so can their robots.

Members who join the forum (any forum) for the sole purpose of getting the URL out into the ethersphere generally stand out, after a time, or sometimes right away. Forums have policies against this sort of ABUSE because their members object to it. Here at WPW we respond to members in ways we hope will be helpful, and will benefit the community as a whole.

When we say we join to help out, and then accumulate a mass of posts proving it, we are being good to our word. When we don't amass any posts in 7 years of membership, it says another thing altogether. We don't see any senior members griping about signature policies on this or any other forum. It's only ever an issue to the low performers--aka, the less helpful among us.

[cppgenius]

We don't see any senior members griping about signature policies on this or any other forum. It's only ever an issue to the low performers--aka, the less helpful among us.

I think I made it clear that I don't have an issue with any signature policy, like I said if you own a forum you can make any policy you like and people have to adhere to this policy or take a hike. Perhaps I let the discussion stray from my original question, which was, what is the impact on non-clickable urls on SEO. Yes a URL is always a URL, it can be picked up by a robot, indexed by a search engine, it can be visited by a user through selecting it, right clicking and choosing Go to ... but neither really is something very beneficial to SEO.

So let me rephrase my question, apart from getting a page indexed, can a non-clickable url have any positive effect on your SEO efforts for that specific url? As LD pointed out he hasn't really tested this. Since I could not get any conclusive answer, I did some more digging and found the following site, witch basically answers my question... non-clickable links does NOT have much SEO value: http://www.seoconsult.com/seoblog/go...yperlinks.html

I'm not griping about signature policies, I am sure everyone agrees that the best links are the ones that brings in high quality traffic to a site and a link from a signature in a forum is hardly a good source of steady traffic (maybe a spike, for a short while, but that's about it), so I am not going to jump of a bridge if I can't have my links in a signature. So many people are focussing too much on getting links, improving their SERP rankings, etc, I get hundreds of e-mails from people who promise me they can get me at the number 1 spot in the SERP's, so I of all people should know how annoying people can be. I get a lot of junk comments from bots, with the sole purpose of hijacking my blog posts to get their spam-link out in the open.

I feel some moderators of certain forums are spreading false information by telling people that non-clickable links in signatures have a significant SEO effect, so much that it has to be banned by a policy. But then, that policy is based on false information. Moderators need to be clear and tell people they want to discourage spam and abuse and therefore they do not allow url's in forum signatures, and that is what I'm griping about.

[weegillis]

By significant impact, you would be referring to just what, exactly? No, it will not count as a link, but it will be a URL present in the page. The SEO effect is immeasurable, imho, but not zero, owing to the qualitative aspects attributable in any URL, link or not. I follow a gazillion text only URL's in the manner described earlier. Some of them even get bookmarked and revisited. Did they not have an impact?

This discussion is covered in many ways already, here and elsewhere. Do signature links have an SEO impact? Yes, if they are associated with topics that bear some value to the readers. 1000 signature links on 1000 fluff posts in 1000 fluff threads will have little or no impact if I'm reading things correctly. The posts have to stand out in order for the signature to gain any weight. I think search engines can figure this much out.

In order for a URL to have any SEO effect, it has to get into the index. If you have a spare sub.domain, try putting a text only URL to that sub.domain's home page in your signature. Make the page something you leave there, so it should have some value, even if it's just a brief article or story about something not related to your main domain. It's a different entity as SE's see it. They like you to have somewhere in the order of at least a couple hundred words, and worthy of making the index, so their needs must be met. It could even be about the test you're running, though that might skew things.

Don't link from anywhere, and especially not from (or to) your own home page, for the time being. Only use text and only in signatures, nowhere else. See how long it takes for the new entity to emerge in the index. If it makes it into the index, you have your answer.

If it doesn't, you don't, since there could be other factors not apparent, so we cannot conclude anything, except that it didn't get indexed, yet. It could take a while to get an answer, so diarize this one, and move on to bigger and better questions.

[ron angel]

There is a simple answer to this dont use boards that do not allow urls in signatures ( ater say 10 posts).If people stop useing the boards they may change their minds about it.

[itvarnews]

You are right Cppgenius............i have also gone through the same problem. Actually most of the forums sites allow to put signature link only after a person has done atleast 10 posts and after that when we get signature link then a problem of Spamming arises though we are not doing it but still our account has been banned.