Signature links

WJP

Free Member
Apr 7, 2010
1,368
267
Bristol
I'm sure this will have been covered somewhere before, but can someone tell me if signature links on ukbf have any impact from an SEO perspective? I'd just be interested to know. Thanks!
 
I'm sure this will have been covered somewhere before, but can someone tell me if signature links on ukbf have any impact from an SEO perspective? I'd just be interested to know. Thanks!

Why don't you give it a try and let us know what you think? You could test it very easily - just load up a page and link to it only from here?

These threads seem to crop up every week and always go nowhere - it would be nice to read something a little more positive?
 
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Why don't you give it a try and let us know what you think? You could test it very easily - just load up a page and link to it only from here?

These threads seem to crop up every week and always go nowhere - it would be nice to read something a little more positive?

You would have to have 2 sites wouldnt you so you could compare, i was trying to find the recent thread about it im sure some one ruled out the seo value of it completely.
 
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You would have to have 2 sites wouldnt you so you could compare, i was trying to find the recent thread about it im sure some one ruled out the seo value of it completely.

No, you need a single page targeting a unique search phrase that doesn't appear anywhwere else on the site - just don't link to it anywhere else (including the site itself).

I suspect the result would be marginally positive for a relatively low competition key phrase and next to minimal for anything above.
 
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I don't see why it should no effect. If this site is indexed, and these threads are indexed and there isn't a "nofollow" tag then what is the problem? Especially for a site with minimal links then having a signature link would indeed help. (or are we saying this site has no authority or is known to be a bad neighbour)

Of course it isn't going to be a panacea and get you on the first position from having a few signature links. But how do you get to first position if not from referring links (don't even attempt to tell me just by on page SEO). Every link counts (unless its spam, but even then, those can be "filtered" to count)

So yes, I would say they do have SEO value, but just not a lot. In fact, not that much at all. But, as the saying goes, you only get up a mountain one step at a time.
 
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out of interest how do i change the sig so its do follow, i often drop stuffin the sig to get it crawled, not for seo value (which is non existent)

Um, so you know for a fact that putting a link in your sig gets a specific site crawled and yet you claim it has no effects on the search engines. Or is that not what SEO is about, having an effect on the search engines.
 
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I think what Massey meant was that a link in your signature will get your site crawled, but won't necessarily benefit your site when it is crawled... (correct me if I'm wrong Massey!)

He said it has no value and then gave a reason (of value) why he used it and the affect on the search engines that it had that he said the links don't do anything to.

:rolleyes:
 
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Massey, I understood what you meant and it was my question, thanks. Don't go letting yourself get trolled now!

There is more to SEO than link juice, and to say those links in signature has NO affect is just incorrect. They will have some affect, just negligible. Indeed if they had no affect then why would they cause a search engine to crawl his specified site?

It all depends on how you use them and the context the links are placed in. Linking to the birmingham site as he does yet writing about SEO and business and PPC of course his links will have no effect as they are not relevant to the target site. Also he has over a 1,000 posts and if google crawls this site then they will see a 1,000 links going to an unrelated site and will consider them spam.

Now if you were writing articles on here, say in the finance section about finance and linked to a finance website are you really trying to tell me they would have no affect? Granted your not going to jump to page 1, not with one group of links from one website. If only life were that easy.

Why do people do directory submissions, why do people add themselves to delicious, stumbleupon, digg, reddit. To get backlinks.

Or are you claiming this site has zero authority and is known to be a bad neighbour?

Feel free to disagree with me, but don't call me a troll because you don't like my opinion.
 
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I don't do SEO myself so I can't comment. It's difficult to tell tones of voice on a forum like this, if that's not how you meant to come across then my apologies.

Apology accepted. Yes, you're right, tone of voice is impossible to convey in just text.

Well placed signature links, in the right context linking to a relevant site will have an effect. I checked and there is no rel="nofollow" tag on the signature links (there is on almost every other kind of link).

Put it one way, if the signature links had no effect, then any links on this forum would have no affect and if this forum is the same as any other forum then no links from any forum would have any affect. its the logical conclusion of what he is saying. I find that hard to swallow. In fact, its blatantly untrue.

But i'm not getting angry about it, or irate, or stressed, just pointing out facts. And if he doesn't agree then we shall have to agree to disagree.
 
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fisicx

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Sep 12, 2006
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www.aerin.co.uk
Consider that the search engines are able devalue certain types of links. Blog comments for example have just about zero value as do thoses from free-for-all directories. A signature link in a forum is another of these DIY links and there was a period when people would sell their signature links on popular and high ranking forums. The whole system became corrupt. So all the SE has to do is set up the system to that any link from a forum is given a score of zero (or near zero).

It doesn't hurt to have a signature link but don't expext it to have any appreciable effect on your ranking. Better to spread your goodwill through help and advice rather than simply promote your business.
 
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Tin

Business Member
Nov 14, 2005
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www.tinsoldierdesign.co.uk
Just to clear things up a bit.

If you are a free member and you try to circumvent the rules with a link in your signature it defaults to no follow.

If you are a paid up member you can choose to have either a follow or no follow signature link.

Massey, to answer your question, as a fully paid member your sig links would default to Follow and to create a no follow link you simply click the last icon on the right of your WYSIWIG box.

If you need a quick way to identify whether a link is follow or no follow, check out Quirk Search Status plugin tool for Firefox.

Ray
 
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aidan1980

Free Member
Jan 16, 2008
1,321
149
Leicester
right, i've said this before. I was around 4/5 for one of my pages in my sig. I made no changes to the site page at all and added it to my sig and within a week i went to number 1. Could of been somethiing else but the obvious is the link. Its also not an ultra competative search term but has really upped my earnings from the page and that can only be a good thing
 
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It is worth the membership fee to UKBF just for the links.
STOP going on about them not working.
They do help and they are good for getting your website changes cached quicker.
All you people who say they are not any good don't offer seo as a service. You obviously have no idea what your talking about.

As Tin mentioned its whether you use "no follows" but just so you can see the benefits if you don't click here
This shows google accepts the links from UKBF

Membership to UKBF has its advantages.
 
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fisicx

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A signature link is just like any other link. The SE will evaulate the relevance of the source to target page and either ignore or give it a PageRank score. Some may benefit others may not. The signature link may alert the SE to the existance of a new site and it may help with the re-indexing frequency.

But the benefits of the signature link are far greater than just doing it for SEO. The readership of the forum is huge (and not just members) and some helpful posts can really promote your business, a good number of members have picked up new clients from the combination of advice and a sig link.

If you aim is to improve your business then regard the sig link as another marketing avenue that can have an SEO benefit.
 
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fisicx

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In fact there are loads of forums that offer free sig links. Trouble is that most of them get spammed to death in the same way the do-follow blog comments get abused.
 
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