Self promotion on these forums

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Ozzy

Ozzy

Founder of UKBF
UKBF Staff
    • Feb 9, 2003
    8,368
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    Northampton, UK
    bdgroup.co.uk
  • #1
    Hi Guys,
    I've had quite a few emails and PMs from a few of you guys on here complaining about the amount of spam and self promotion from other members on these forums.
    I've tended to be a bit more tollerant towards longer term members, but the problem is that some are taking a bit more than the inch I gave, and it also sets a bad example for new members (they did it so why cant I).

    So I'm afraid the mods and I are going to have a to get a little more strict with self promotion on here.

    Please, if you have a specific and unique offer only available to readers of these forums post it in the UKBF Offers section. Otherwise, if you must advertise please keep it to a brief message in your signature. For an example look at mine, Matrixx, handongroup and a few others similar for good clean signatures.

    Just letting you know incase any see a post disappear and feel offended by it :)
     
    K

    KM-Tiger

    Free Member
    Aug 10, 2003
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    Bexley, Kent
  • #5
    MacMyDay said:
    So, would you rather we (by that I, of course, include myself) remove banners etc from signatures?
    Click to expand...
    If that question was to me the answer is yes, or rather it's irrelevant as I've blocked banners anyway.

    I come here to read and respond to what people say, maybe offer or ask for help, not look at adverts.

    Links, however, are unobtrusive and might come in handy one day.
     
    Upvote 0
    M

    MarkPearson

  • #9
    Ok, Ozzy

    I agree with the full on self promotion.

    What't your thoughts on the banners in the signatures.

    I think its either a yes, keep them or you disable the option and every one has text links.

    Personally, I don't mind seeing peoples banners in their signatures. It helps me put a name to the type of business they run.

    I do think its either for or against.

    If you agree to allow them, then maybe set a rule on size etc?
     
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    clairemackaness

    clairemackaness

    Free Member
    Oct 7, 2005
    2,060
    1
    Brentwood, Essex
  • #15
    I like the banners and I hope that I am not one of those who always self promotes. I do post the odd offer here and there and tell you about good stuff, but mainly when I have gained UKBF memebers help in acheiving something (like my product shop).

    I think we all really know whose being talked about here, (weekly posts blah de blah de blah), so if we all take a chill pill and just heed the advice I think things will all be A OK!

    Claire
    xx
     
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    S

    SuffolkDesigns

  • #18
    This is a great idea, and will help the forums do what they are best at, which is helping others.

    A typical example is when someone asks if anyone can recommend a good web designer. Normally there are very few recommendations, and alot of people jumping in with "I can do that" (which are not exactly recommendations....)

    There are "tenders" and "offers" forums which should be more than enough for people to promote their own services in.

    I get more clients through these forums by not aggressively self promoting, so hopefully everyone else will as well :D
     
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    bwglaw

    bwglaw

    Free Member
    Apr 8, 2005
    4,567
    242
    Richmond, Surrey
  • #19
    vshosting said:
    I get more clients through these forums by not aggressively self promoting, so hopefully everyone else will as well :D
    Click to expand...

    I agree, since I have updated my signature I have had a few contacts for legal advice and one was from a member rarely on here, with others being regulars.

    I think some signatures are way over the top. The signature is your image, make it unique. Animated GIF/Graphic banners are viewed IMO as merely advertising. Why not just have your logo as an Avatar and the signature as a descriptive text which is SEO friendly.

    With being on a slow connection, these banners are slowing down the upload of a page. Not sure if it affects the server bandwidths or anything.
     
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    S

    SuffolkDesigns

  • #20
    handsongroup said:
    I agree, since I have updated my signature I have had a few contacts for legal advice and one was from a member rarely on here, with others being regulars.
    Click to expand...
    Maybe we are getting more used to ignoring sales pitches that are forced upon us, especially with all the viagra spam etc that surrounds us all on a daily basis, and concentrate more on finding what we want ourselves.
     
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    C

    confused

  • #21
    Personally I have no issues with banners at the bottom, I think it gives you an idea of what the person does, most of the ones are a dedent size, the ones on this post for example are the roses one and Claires, I think they do no harm at all but do give a personal touch so to speak, maybe as mentioned, a size limit may be the answer.
    I do hope that banners arnt disallowed, especially since Ewen is kindly making me one!
    I definately agree that there are too many blantently advertising their business at every possible moment, and indeed, anyone wanting a new website ought to post in the tenders forum since thats what its there for.

    CALV
     
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    Ian J

    Ian J

    Free Member
    Nov 6, 2004
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    factoringsolutions.co.uk
  • #22
    Ozzy said:
    just using text links is actually better for the SEO if your website anyway ;)
    Click to expand...

    I'm not sure what the value of the text links in the signature is here anyway. I know that what Google considers to be a link is a closely guarded secret but analysing what Google shows as a link indicates that they don't treat links from UKBF as highly as they do the other business and finance forums. The PR here seems high enough and I just wonder if it's anything to do with the huge amount of "post count padding" that goes on here resulting in Google downrating the site.
     
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    clairemackaness

    clairemackaness

    Free Member
    Oct 7, 2005
    2,060
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    Brentwood, Essex
  • #23
    Jauvenescense is on the case to make me a small side bar which I will have as my avatar shortly and I will be removing my big one. I know people like it, but others dont.

    I guess what we must also remember is that Jauv got a lot of business out of mine, marks and Nigels banners. Everyone liked them and then went and ordered them.

    I think VS is right about getting business without activly promoting. I have now had 7 orders from UKBF members and have never actually posted anything like "I CAN PAINT YOU A PICTURE FOR REALLY LOW PRICES" (woops just did it LOL), but just put up a simple 10% discount in offers.

    Proofs in the pud guys.

    p.s Banners staying until I get my new one LOL
     
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    Ian J

    Ian J

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    Nov 6, 2004
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    factoringsolutions.co.uk
  • #24
    Upvote 0
    Top Hat

    Top Hat

    Free Member
    Mar 3, 2005
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    Airstrip One
  • #25
    I think you should use the rel=nofollow tag

    14. How do I tell Googlebot not to crawl a single outgoing link on a page?

    Meta tags can exclude all outgoing links on a page, but you can also instruct Googlebot not to crawl individual links by adding rel="nofollow" to a hyperlink. When Google sees the attribute rel="nofollow" on hyperlinks, those links won't get any credit when we rank websites in our search results. For example a link,

    <a href=http://www.example.com/>This is a great link!</a>

    could be replaced with

    I can't vouch for this link.
    Click to expand...

    And advertise the fact, it would stop people posting links for SEO purposes
     
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    S

    SuffolkDesigns

  • #30
    there is also an arguement that if members can have banners in their sigs, they would have no need to pay for advertising space on the forums, which in relation to Ozzy's recent post in the feedback forum might be something to consider.
     
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    J

    Jayne

  • #33
    Don't think Ozzy said anything about banners, I thought he ment, those dropping their products and services into threads, like I sell that or do that, i'll PM you, instead of just Pming quietly, they have to announce it, that sort of thing. And there are the ones who make jokes of things, like buy my xxxxx..lol, it's all still advertising and this it what I thought this thread was about, he's asking for people to stop self promoting. That's all.

    Jayne :D
     
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    Tin

    Tin

    Business Member
    Nov 14, 2005
    2,931
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    Herefordshire
    www.tinsoldierdesign.co.uk
  • #34
    Hi

    Interesting thread this and I'd like to throw my bit in on a number of points. Firstly, it does seem to me that there's a portion of forum members who appear to be blatingly advertising their product whenever they get a chance by posting or replying with just one liners. Personally it doesn't bother me and you can't really blame them if they look at this forum or forums in general as a means of self promotion but it does seem to be on the increase in here.

    Secondly, concurring with Top Hats post yes, if board moderators want to nullify any potential seo benefit members could get through using text or banner links then using the 'rel=nofollow' will do just that but as Top Hat mentioned that point it led me to run some checks to see if there's actually any benefit by using text links on this forum and I can't see any evidence that there is. There's clear evidence that some members here who post on other forums get a slight but distinct seo benefit if they include links in sigs but not from this forum which possibly brings the worth of such links into question anyway. For time reasons I only used 3 forum examples in my test (could have picked the wrong examples) :) but if that's the case then the only reason I see for promoting a business on here is to generate new customers via the forum members themselves as any seo benefit seems to be non existant.

    Thirdly... off to find another forum :wink:

    Ray
     
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    E

    ewan

  • #38
    avatar.jpg


    Theres the image, try simply right click save image as and then upload it via your UKBF profile.
     
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    C

    Coding Monkey

  • #39
    Well, I was bored for 20 minutes, so produced a script that limits the size, width, height and type of images that can be used in signatures. You're welcome to have it, but I won't put it here, as I might be seen to be promoting myself ;)
     
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    Tin

    Tin

    Business Member
    Nov 14, 2005
    2,931
    1,427
    Herefordshire
    www.tinsoldierdesign.co.uk
  • #40
    Duane wrote
    Tin, why do you think there might be less (or no) benefit from sigs on here whilst there is from other forums? (I assume the others are phpBB too with out any mod-rewrites)
    Click to expand...

    I picked 3 random members from this forum for my test. These members have both a website and have been using links in whatever form to link to their sites via forum posts from here for sufficient a time that the forum pages carrying the links would by now have been cached if they were to be cached. These pages are cached in Google & Yahoo.
    I then used the link operator on Google & Yahoo on all 3 sites and didn't find a single link from this site to their respective websites. Yahoo showed different link values & numbers as expected but failed to show any from this forum.
    In conducting the test I did notice an indexing value of links from a variety of other forums where those same members are posting and these are clearly being 'factored in' on Google & Yahoo but the lack of same from here leads me to conclude there's currently no benefit in such practice.
    I didn't hang around long enough to check if they were PHPBB forums at the time sorry.
    I do make the point that I randomly picked 3 so it's possible without running other tests that I picked an a non-typical bunch. :)

    Ray

    ps; I don't want to take this thread off topic either so won't post further on it :)
     
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