A common belief (one which I personally don’t agree with) is that Google can detect where a link is on a page and discount it. Sure, ideally I would love my link within a post on a content rich blog, but that’s more for traffic, than SEO purposes. However, Google has taken a few measures in the last few years to discount links from things such as directories and blog comments.
Question is - will Forum signatures be next?
Depending on the script, they’re usually google followable links. Big forums have suffered under the weight of spam. Sitepoint is creaking but they’re looking to stop it. Digital Point is, quite frankly, Digital Pointless. Even on a couple of my forums now I’m getting people with sensible names with signatures I don’t particularly appreciate. So far, they’ve been on topic, but I’m keeping an eye out for them.
So will Google smack down Forum signature links soon? It seems like the most obvious. And quite frankly, I don’t care.
You see, I and a lot of other people realise the value of blog commenting and forum posting. It’s not done to build links, but to build your reputation within the community. There’s a great post here on why most SEOs fail at Social Networking. You can apply the same to Blog Commenting and forum posting. I have exclusivley used blog commenting and forum commenting to push this blog so far. It’s going pretty well, as forum signautres and blog commenting bring traffic. Traffic leads to readers, and readers link to people commenting, subscribing, submitting content to social network sites, and linking back.
Which is much more important than having a link in the forum signature. SEOs will complain, but I can honestly see Forum Signatures go the way of directory submission & blog comments in terms of useful linkbacks.
Thoughts?
on Nov 11th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
that wouldn’t surprise me at all. google spanks everything. why should forum signatures be any different?
on Nov 14th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
I just don’t see why it matters. Why do they care?? They take the fun out of everything… *pout*
on Nov 17th, 2008 at 11:22 am
some say that Google’s already discounting forum signature links, but unfortunately in a lot of people’s eyes, a link is better than none and do-follow forums are an easy way to achieve them.
I’d say where a while off eliminating this the forum link builders, but as you mention in this post we’ll be doing our best to manage it.
on Nov 17th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
@Shayne - Yes, I appreciate all your hard work in eliminating Forum Sig Spammers, I do like your community at sitepoint - best I’ve been to
I think the nofollow thing will work eventually, and there are people on the site who are doing great work in moderating. I do report (almost) every post I see that’s fluff.
Thanks for commenting.