Hello I am wondering if you add your url in your signature in forums does this count as backlinks or in someway help out search engine rankings?

So what I am wondering is my site is about credit and Bankruptcy. I post in other forums on these topics, would it help me out any to add my url in my sig on these other forums?

Any ideas would be great

The link will count as a backlink. The first few the search engines know about might count more than the rest meaning that you might get essentially the same benefit for 10 links as you will for 100. I think the search engines lessen the weight when the links are across an entire site.

The links will still be valuable just for their own sake though. If you post to a forum related to credit and bankruptcy issues and write posts with good advice people will click on the to check out your site.

The best way to improve the wieght of the url in your link would be to use your keywords in the anchor text. So if one of the keyword phraes you're targeting is 'credit repair' then you should use 'credit repair' as the anchor text for the link and also point the link to your credit repair page instead of your home page. You can usually add more than one link in your signature on many forums so use more than one and use different anchor text in each and point each to the most appropriate page.

Also it's a good idea to post on forums that are related to your business. if you post to a forum that's about credit and bakruptcy the links in those signatures will carry more weight than the link in your signature here since those forums are related more to your topic.

It might count as a backlink if the forum doesnt have a nofollow tag.
More so though I think its great for some free traffic

Thank you. I am slowing trying to get an idea on all of this.

Backlinks from forums do count for something, but I think that forum links do not count nearly as much as good relevant content links. It does help some, and it certainly does no harm.

how would a search engine know if your link is coming from a forum?

every page generated by a script and a template has a "footprint" and forums are no different. So the SE indexing mechanisms can identify the type of software that created the page and flag accordingly.

wow that sounds complicated

Defenitely helps
Not sure about solid traffic additions, but search engines count it as a link to your site increasing site rating in search results.

Originally Posted by yugu

Defenitely helps
Not sure about solid traffic additions, but search engines count it as a link to your site increasing site rating in search results.

Not always

Chris I must ask, your so smart with all of this website stuff, do you do any seo stuff?

Anchor your keywords and post in relevant forums. It also helps to post with "heavy" and "on point" articles.

Originally Posted by colochris

Chris I must ask, your so smart with all of this website stuff, do you do any seo stuff?

Mainly for myself and a few occasional clients.

After a while you get P'ed off with clients who won't release information and images for their site, ones who provide about half what's needed, then wonder why it doesn't get finished off, and the ones who after 2 years of SEO work and getting their site found for useful phrases, decide to change domain names (after the aging delay had kicked in) and go with a "nice" all flash site because "we're paying a lot of money for it, so it must be good!". They were a little taken by surprise when I handed back their file and left the meeting.

Funny and sad at the same time Chris. ColoChris sometimes it can be very frustrating doing seo on someone else's site because clients won't always let you do what needs to be done. A lot also have some very unrealistic expectations of what it's all about.

The things Chris mentioned above are pretty common and I'm sure had he not walked out of that meeting in about a month they would be blaming him when their site disappears from the search engines. I've also seen where a lot of people don't want to pay for what the work really entails.

Chris did you catch this post on Aaron Wall's blog where he posted the text of a conversation he had with someone asking for advice over messenger. You'll probably find it amusing (or just get completely frustrated with the guy). I'm amazed Aaron displayed as much patience as he did.

Yep, Kudos to Aaron for lasting that long. I've had a few IM conversations in a similar vein, the phone often rang or I got a visitor at some convenient moment

I don't have my MSN handle in forum profiles any more

Funny how the phone often rings at just the right moment. Mine always seems to ring just as a someone begins to get on my nerves. Yeah I'm pretty guarded about how to get to me on messenger. It's reserved for a few close friends and few people I need to work with.

I find that it works wonders when I add my signature to my URL. It lets others take note, and not just scroll by.