Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Forum profile section or signature line as backlink
-
Hi,
Forum profile section or signature line as backlink VS Answering a question and giving a related post URl as the answer is better?
I have the above question on which would be better
Would a signature or website name in the profile is valuable then a link to your site where information is available?
Does Google consider both as spam/blackhat?
Thanks
-
The idea in engaging with people in forums is to drive traffic, become a source of information and eventually achieve sales. been there done it.
Do not focus solely on link building, SEO now is more of a complete digital marketing package than link building.
Unfortunately I do not remember the source I saw this but I am 99,9% sure that signature links might be penalised by Google so i wouldnt go with that direction (should you insist in pure link building ofcourse).
-
Thanks but my questions would be will answering in forums and providing links of no use?
-
If I were to chose, I'd say profiles are better than signatures. They're less pushy and less likely to be harmful to your site's rankings.
-
Direct traffic is the goal
But will the Algorithmic benefit hurt?
-
What is the primary benefit you're looking to get? Algorithmic benefit? Direct traffic? Branding?
-
So forum posting is not a good medium?
Helping members on sites and then giving an exact URL which has relevant info?
Among these 3 and blog commenting which do you suggest
-
More often than not, signatures and links from profiles are nofollowed so you probably won't get any link juice from either. If I were to chose, I'd say profiles are better than signatures because it's better to have one link coming from a stronger page than a bunch of links with the same anchor text coming from a bunch of weaker pages. If you have a page of content on your site that would be important to your target audience, you'd be better off not using either of those methods, as they're on the spammy side. You'd be better of promoting through social media channels.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
My backlinks are not showing in webmaster tools? Why
Hi Experts, I have follow backlinks from a domain for 6 months, but its not apear in Links to Your Site tools (search console) that domain has 302k indexed pages in google! Could you please explain me why google not showing this type of backlinks?
Technical SEO | | denakalami7 -
Backlinks that go to a redirected URL
Hey guys, just wondering, my client has 3 websites, 2 of 3 will be closed down and the domains will be permanently redirected to the 1 primary domain - however they have some high quality backlinks pointing the domains that will be redirected. How does this effective SEO? Domain One (primary - getting redesign and rebuilt) - not many backlinks
Technical SEO | | thinkLukeSEO
Domain Two (will redirect to Domain One) - has quality backlinks
Domain Three (will redirect to Domain One) - has quality backlinks When the new website is launched on Domain One I will contact the backlink providers and request they update their URL - i assume that would be the best.0 -
ADA, WCAG, Section 508 Accessibility and hidden text
I am working on fixing accessibility issues on client's site, and they have contracted with a vendor who provides both tools to monitor the site and consulting to help us fix issues that are found. When there are spatial relationships between elements on a page that would be not be evident to someone listening via a screen reader, a strategy that they recommended to us to is to add text helpers that are not visible, but still read by the screen readers. An example: Directions to our Fifth Avenue Store I have seen this technique used on a major brand site but I am concerned that their brand strength insulates them from a hidden text penalty far more than my client's brand would. Also, their implementation uses class names like "ada_hidden" which may help search engines understand the intent, or may not at all. I am looking for opinions regarding the use of this technique. Normally I wouldn't use it for risk of penalty, but here the intent is to improve the user experience of the pages. Anyone used similar techniques for ADA/WCAG, or solved the problem in a more SEO-friendly way? Thanks, Will
Technical SEO | | WillW0 -
Backlinks that we have if they are 404?
Hi All, Backlinks that we have if they are 404? Open site explorer shows 1,000 of links and when I check many are 404 and those are spammy links which we had but now the sites are 404 I am doing a link profile check which is cleaning up all spammy links Should i take any action on them? As open site explorer or Google still shows these links on the searches. Should we mention these URL's in disallow in Google webmaster. Thanks
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Forum Profile Links
Are they really important? Many preach they are, and there are tonnes of services out there who give you thousands of forum profile links in no time. I strictly believe in genuine links built the hard way, and definitely don't want to get into anything which is black hat. Please suggest if building several Forum Profile Links is an appropriate way of building links?
Technical SEO | | KS__2 -
Do Backlinks to a PDF help with overall authority/link juice for the rest of the domain?
We are working on a website that has some high-quality industry articles available on their website. For each article, there is an abstract with a link to the PDF which is hosted on the domain. We have found in Analytics that a lot of sites link directly to the PDF and not the webpage that has the abstract of the article. Can we get any benefit from a direct PDF link? Or do we need to modify our strategy?
Technical SEO | | MattAaron0 -
DISQUS COMMENTS backlinks-good for seo? YES/NO?
DISQUS COMMENTS backlinks-good for seo? YES/NO? I have just started commenting on "powered by disquus" websites in the Disqus comments box and left a link to my website in the name field! Having googled whether Disqus comments backlinks are any good for seo purposes i have discovered that there is a 50/50 view on the subject with some people saying they are a "goldmine" for getting high PR backlinks and others saying they are a waste of time because googlebot cannot read Java. My own experience of commenting on Disqus powered websites is that wordpress blogs powered by disqus comments ARE INDEXED by GOOGLE and the "BACKLINK IS IN THE SOURCE OF THE PAGE" When i comment on normal websites using the Disqus comment system i have found that my Disqus comments ARE NOT indexed by Google and there IS NO BACKLINK in the page source! Has anybody got any views on whether Disqus comments backlinks are any good?
Technical SEO | | Freebetsuk2 -
Index forum sites
Hi Moz Team, somehow the last question i raised a few days ago not only wasnt answered up until now, it was also completely deleted and the credit was not "refunded" - obviously there was some data loss involved with your restructuring. Can you check whether you still find the last question and answer it quickly? I need the answer 🙂 Here is one more question: I bought a website that has a huge forum, loads of pages with user generated content. Overall around 500.000 Threads with 9 Million comments. The complete forum is noindex/nofollow when i bought the site, now i am thinking about what is the best way to unleash the potential. The current system is vBulletin 3.6.10. a) Shall i first do an update of vbulletin to version 4 and use the vSEO tool to make the URLs clean, more user and search engine friendly before i switch to index/follow? b) would you recommend to have the forum in the folder structure or on a subdomain? As far as i know subdomain does take lesser strenght from the TLD, however, it is safer because the subdomain is seen as a separate entity from the regular TLD. Having it in he folder makes it easiert to pass strenght from the TLD to the forum, however, it puts my TLD at risk c) Would you release all forum sites at once or section by section? I think section by section looks rather unnatural not only to search engines but also to users, however, i am afraid of blasting more than a millionpages into the index at once. d) Would you index the first page of a threat or all pages of a threat? I fear duplicate content as the different pages of the threat contain different body content but the same Title and possibly the same h1. Looking forward to hear from you soon! Best Fabian
Technical SEO | | fabiank0