After posting about forum signatures and whether or not they help with keyword positioning, I referred to a backlink analysis tool that I was using to help me justify that determination. I’d like to spread the word to help you throughout your search engine optimization and link building endeavor.

Please note that I am in no way affiliated with the site that I am about to refer to you, but instead am helping a site by linking to and referring to you as hopefully someone will do for you when they find how useful and/or resourceful your own site is. For easy and quick backlink analysis, I’d recommend using Backlink Watch – it’s a pretty powerful tool and resource for helping you analyze your own backlinks and whose linking to your site. It seems that over the years they have limited the number of backlinks to 1000 to show you, and that’s a shame if you’re like me and have thousands upon thousands of forum signature links pointing back at to your site, now realizing how little value and weight they possess. >.<;

For a few years now, ever since I’ve indulged myself into seriously optimizing my site for the major search engines, it’s always been taught everywhere that the more backlinks you have to your site, the better your site will generally rank. Now does this basic rule of thumb apply to its literal extent? Let’s broaden this and actually take a look at whether or not the most popular form of linking, at least for most independent webmasters, which is linking to your site in forum signatures.

Since I have started linking to my sites within my arsenal of forum accounts, in which some have well over 1000 posts, I still ponder to date whether or not these links are actually helping my sites’ search engine ranking placements for the keywords that I’m using. No doubt, for the amount of quality posts that I make in the arsenal of forums that I’m registered to, are these links in my signatures actually worth the time to build – that is, unless of course you’re like me and not just some spammer, who actually contributes to the forum that they’re participating in, and not registered there for the free backlink. I simply link back to my sites in my signatures to try and expose my site, not to spam, but this is the most basic form of link building and thus the most-abused form among the majority of webmasters out there to build backlinks to their sites.

The best way that I can really distinguish whether or not these links actually help is to determine whether or not these links are why my sites are being ranked well for the keywords that I specify within these links. In a short answer, I’d have to say no – forum signature links don’t relatively help search engine ranking placements, and I’m going to explain why. Forum signature links may help your site get crawled faster, and possibly even give you traffic from the forum that you’re posting on, but major search engines such as Google can distinguish whether or not these links are “natural” – if these links are being posted because the sites being linked to are actually resourceful, or if these links are being posted because they reflect some personal connection to the content being posted. Google can distinguish that these links are being posted because they aren’t natural links – natural links are links that actually help increase your PageRank and thus your SERPs – and in fact can further determine that they’re signature links specifically. If you view the page source of any forum, and go to where your link is placed, you’ll see that there are many references in HTML comments as well as coding that refer back to the word “signature” and phrases such as “user signature,” in which Google has downgraded these references and thus the quality and weight of the link being provided within these codes/areas of the site.

I also just wanted to add in that forum signatures are a great way to get your site noticed by search engines, in terms of having your site(s) crawled, but don’t rely on this linking technique to help you achieve better rankings, especially for competitive keywords. These links bear very little weight. I was able to distinguish this by using various backlink analysis tools in which allow me to see that these links are existent and noticed by search engines, but for the amount of links that I have for the keywords that I set in those links, they really didn’t help me (if they did at all) rank generally better. And that’s why I’m concluding that forum signature links bear no weight and thus really don’t help with search engine ranking placements.

If you’re using forums to increase your search engine ranking placements, you’re wasting your time. There are ways you can use forum signature links for your advantage though:

• If you insist on trying to increase the exposure of your site to search engines by linking back to your site(s) on forums, then make sure that you post and NOT SPAM on RELEVANT forums – forums that relate to your site’s content. This will not only help your links weigh a little bit more, and thus have some possible actual value, but may also even send you targeted traffic as an added-bonus. It’s always good to get your backlinks from related and even competing sites.
• In relation to what was just stated in the above bullet, ONLY PURCHASE FORUM SIGNATURE LINKS ON RELATED AND/OR COMPETING FORUMS. Again, the link may actually have some weight being linked to the niche of the site that your link is on, and you should get some traffic – traffic that you actually want – from having your link posted on a relative site/forum.
• If you want to gain real backlinks using a forum, purchase a sticky thread in a highly populated area of the forum so that you can advertise your sites within it. You’ll be able to use the rankings of that forum for your benefit, as well as any and all traffic that is directed there. Just make sure the forum relates to your niche!

And to conclude this post, always realize that spam is detected not only by search engines (and major search engines like Google WILL penalize you for mass spamming), but it’s also detected by regular Internet users. Don’t spam a site looking for your own self-gain. Not only is it immoral, but it really does give you and your site a bad rep all the way around.

Always remember a little hard work always pays off in the end. One of my sites is closing in on 50,000 registered users soon, and that’s from devoting a set series of time to search engine optimization. I never spam or try to cheat my way into search engines and keywords, and look at this: of those almost 50,000 users, a majority of them have converted into customers of my eBusiness. And realize too that the work you put in doesn’t give you instant results – I waited about 3-6 months to see my hard work start to pay off. And don’t overwork yourself either. If you can, try to devote 3 hours per week if not 6 into optimizing your site and building backlinks. Over a month’s time, you should be able to take a break from that work and see it pay off in 3-6 months time. Again, don’t expect a landslide of traffic, or a goldmine or income, but it should steadily increase as long as your site is up, and it’s worth it. A little hard work does pay off.

A question that I frequently see across the web concerning many new webmasters is whether or not links can hurt your sites’ rankings. There are two popular variations to this question as well, which include can links from “unfriendly” sites hurt your sites’ rankings, and can too many links hurt your sites’ rankings? I’ll get to both of these questions within this post one at a time.

Regarding the first question of “unfriendly” sites linking to your site hurting your sites’ rankings, the simple answer is no. No link can necessarily hurt you, when it comes into relation to this question, because if a link like this could hurt you, many competitors would be knocking out their competition on the web by linking to competing sites on “unfriendly” sites. By the way, “unfriendly” sites are adult sites, spam sites, Google-blacklisted sites, and other kinds of sites that are either frowned upon by search engines, break search engines’ terms of service, and/or contain illegal and/or inappropriate content. Please note that although links from “unfriendly” sites will not hurt your sites’ rankins, they will also not benefit your site or its rankings as well – these links will have no affect on your site’s keyword ranking placement within search engine search results. Links from “unfriendly” sites may get you traffic, but will most-likely be untargeted traffic, so if you’re planning on buying links be sure to buy links from relevant websites – this’ll allow you to receive benefits in terms of search engine ranking placements as well as possibly bring your site targeted traffic.

Now onto the next question of can too many links hurt your site? The short answer to this one, again, is no, because the basic concept of linking is that the more people that link to your site, the better your site, content, or product/service must be. Links are like the Internet’s method of promotion, particularly “word-of-mouth” advertising. Now, on the other hand, too many links too fast can get you banned from some leading search engines such as Google, because algorithms are set up to prevent sites that spam links from cheating their way to the top. Think smart, because these search engines know what it is. Don’t spam your link everywhere or buy a thousand or so links in one day, because it will raise a flag and most-likely get your banned out of a search engine’s index completely. I think the max number of links you can achieve in one day is somewhere between fifty and one hundred, so definitely try to keep the number of links you attain in one day somewhere in between that range, just to stay safe.

It’s important to continuously attain links to your site, to improve rankings. Be smart about the number of links you attain, and where you attain them from. Think like an innovator to find out a method that will attain you a solid number of links as well. And remember, links are an online method for people to spread the word – it’s basically the same as “word-of-mouth” advertising. That’s why many search engines look at the number of links to a site to determine the site’s placement for specific keywords, because in a theory, these links are the foundation for your site’s reputation and credibility, for whatever it may provide.