Those Thrilling Webmaster Forum Sigs
• SEO Ignoramus
I’m posting in forums again, this time I’m commenting on and seeking advice on webmaster forums.
Some of the forums I joined three years ago. I’ve been lurking hoping to absorb some of the insights and wisdom of the people who know far more about webmastering than I ever will.
One thing that has struck me are the people with so damn many sites in their sigs.
Do they really think that will work some sort of Google voodoo? A forum must be an easily spotted pattern. And the world’s biggest search engine has technicians who must surely know the value of the links posted on them.
So if you’ve posted 1,482 comments in three months you may not have accomplished the might PR magic you hoped.
The most useful form of forum entry and comment - the same is true of comments on blogs - are those that will actually attract a visit from a likeminded webmaster who will offer fellowship, advice or information.
But most webmasters ignore the signatures and links. They know why they are there. So unless you have something just plain dumbfounding and insightful to say you won’t get much in the way of the real human traffic that might be valuable.
Another instance of: do it because you enjoy it or you learn. Otherwise: skip the forums and use your keyboard to create interesting pages.
Which can be awfully difficult if you are boring person with no special insight or personality.
Comments
I put all my sites in my signature (7) not for higher SERP but actually to show others in the communities what my projects are.
I don’t expect that I should get better results in SE but rather just trying to get a few extra clicks every now and then.
Posted by: Troy | June 9, 2006 07:48 PM
Some people who know far more than I do stuff their sigs with links to their sites.
I’ve just become a little paranoid about Google seeing network interlinking as link abuse. So I don’t link any of my sites together unless they are thematically related. Similarly if there is any SEO benefit from forum signatures it is probably only when the forum is related to the site. So I try to not dilute that possible effect by including links to sites that don’t match the topic of the forum.
I have gotten some really good traffic from sig lines popular non-webmaster forums.
This entry was in my “SEO Ignoramus” category so I don’t really claim to know anything.
Posted by: Richard Evans Lee | June 10, 2006 06:03 AM