Within the Q&A forum, is it spam to include a website in our signature?
-
Hello Mozzers!
I've seen several contributors that end their questions and responses with a website. Just for the sake of the argument, this is an example:
-- Some text about the response/question --- Hope I've helped. Gaston Riera www.domain-Gaston-company.com
To clarify more, the URL does never have a link. I've always considered that this is a place to share and help other by ours/others expertise not to self promote implicitly our company.
So, my question is related to the rules and best practices in the forum:- Is it spam to include a website in the signature of a message?
- Does Moz's community staff take some action about those?
Thanks!
GR. -
Gaston,
This is a good discussion question and EGOL has given much of what I think. I think the overarching idea with Moz has always been it was high quality advice and no one was doing anything overt to make it about marketing themselves or their companies. Having been on Moz a long time I can tell you that the comments to someone purposefully trying to market themselves generally tend to quell repeat offenders.
So, the soft sell is the approach most use in Q&A if they are doing anything beyond truly helping, discussing and learning.Good question though,
Robert
-
I don't mind the domain below their signature. I do that in all of my business email messages. Sometimes I have two domains in my email signatures. To me, a forum post is not unlike a public email and an unliked domain is not offensive to me in any way.
Is it marketing? Yes, probably.
At the same time, it can be credibility. I have gone to the websites of people who add an unlinked domain in their signature and have been impressed with what I find there. These have all been SEO websites. If they would have been fish oil supplement websites, or payday loan websites, I would likely have a very different opinion. So, the industry of the domain produces an aroma or an odor.
-
Of course that manking a link is a little disgusting.
On the other hand, don't you think that, despite there's no link, leaving their's bussiness domain is an act of self promotion?
To me it's like they are contributing just to promote theirself, not for the community. The correct place (in my opinion) to show off your company is in the profile description, so there will be no need to add it in the signature.Am I too blind? Is it that I hate with my guts SPAM?
-
Here is how these hit my mind....
Linked money keyword... not here to contribute, instead, here to mooch links, I don't like it, don't trust the post if I don't know the person.
Linked domain... less annoying than the above and I don't like it.
Unlinked domain... I don't mind this and don't find it annoying - if it is attached to a post that genuinely tries to help someone. I might actually visit the websites of some strong contributors, just to see what they hold out as their expertise.
The deliberate act of making the link completely changes what I think of these additions to the bottom of a post.
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
-
90% website bounce rate - What am I doing wrong?
(Also not getting any comments on any of my articles) Hi, everyone! I'm very new to the community here, but I'm honestly at my wits end. I've run an affiliate marketing site for about 8 months now, and I've consistently had issues with bounce rate. I've tried to look into it myself, but I can't seem to determine what the issue is. A couple things, though - One, a lot of my traffic currently goes to two articles which don't actually have any intent to convert. I didn't even write those articles for the sake of conversion, they were just for fun and I thought they'd be useful to people who stumbled across them. So that could be one reason my bounce rate is so high, but I'm not sure.Anyway, I've asked a LOT of people in the past (I was part of an affiliate marketing community at one point - I asked the founders, friends, strangers, and other successful affiliate marketers about this) if there's anything wrong with my content, etc. The answer has always been no, that it's good. I'm sorry. My thoughts are a bit scatterbrained here. I just don't know what to do here. If all my content for 8 months has just utterly sucked, I'd feel pretty demotivated, but at least I could know what to improve going forward. That's what I need help with from you guys. Here's my website, though I'm not sure if links are allowed: http://cheapgamesguru.com/ My latest articles aren't really getting any traffic at all yet, so I'm not really concerned with them. Specifically, ignore my Future of the HTC Vive, Crusader Kings 2, and World of Warcraft articles. Those are part of my "fun blogs" where I just write about games and such with no real intent to convert. If they start getting traffic, then I'll go and add some more internal links or CTAs. However, a couple articles that I AM having issues with are here: http://cheapgamesguru.com/top-5-best-mid-tower-cases ; http://cheapgamesguru.com/top-5-computer-case-fans-the-best-case-fans-for-your-rig ; http://cheapgamesguru.com/what-is-the-best-micro-atx-case-for-gaming-top-5-best-micro-atx-cases (The links on the Micro ATX article are currently broken - This could very well be one of the reasons! However, this trend of high bounce rates started quite some time ago, so it's still an issue) Could it be as simple as a performance problem? I haven't checked my pagespeed recently, not since I switched to a new (Faster) host. I know users are far more likely to leave if the site doesn't load within 3 seconds. Another possible reason is referral spam, of course. I've tried my very best to eliminate it as much as possible, used filtering tools, etc. but I can't seem to completely eradicate it. Thanks in advance! Ask me for any details you might need.
Search Behavior | | Polycount0 -
How to capture leads from website?
Hi, We have a contact and a registration form on our website to capture leads/enquiries. However, I have come across many websites who give away many resources for free i.e. without asking for any user details. In this case, how do they track or capture the data of people coming to their website and interacting with the content? There are other methods we well like CTAs, pop-up on exit intent etc., but these are different to what I have asked above. Regards
Search Behavior | | IM_Learner0 -
Re-Launching Old website with New SEO Friendly Features - What should I track?
Hey Mozers, I was brought on to the team to Optimize the old website to make it more SEO friendly and I was able to get some cool features up. What Analytic Key points should I keep track of? The website launches in 2 weeks and I think Now would be a great time to start gather data bout the old site. I'd like to make sure I keep the website under a microscope to make sure there are as little errors as possible. What am I missing I already have: Page Authority Domain Authority Bounce Rate Time on page Visitors/Sessions Unique Visitors/Sessions
Search Behavior | | rpaiva0 -
Correct approach to a business website with separate content for personal and business customers
I'm laying the groundwork for a fairly involved website. The website is for a telco that caters to both residential and B2B. I was browsing the websites of the likes of Verizon, AT&T, Sprint & T-Mobile. What I saw is that they compartmentalize almost everything - all their business pages are in a business subdoman, all their investor info is in an investor subdomain and so-on. So I'm going implement this strategy on this website update. I just want to make sure that my idea makes sense and isn't a complete cluster****. I've attached a link to the mind map. Everything with "(sub)" attached to it is a subdomain. Everything else is a page at the root level of the top domain. Most of the visitors we get to the website are residential, so instead of loading a portal at first and asking if they're there for person or business reasons, I'm considering forwarding all visitors to the top-level domain to the personal.example.com site. Is this okay or would it be better to just keep the content in the top-level rather than forwarding all traffic to a subdomain? Thank you! 1JY7DWw
Search Behavior | | CucumberGroup0 -
Why does my website not rank better for the keyword i am going for?
My website is www.canadafloraldelivery.com. I just can't seem to get my webpage ranked well for the keyword " Flowers Edmonton " . Also I can't seem to get my Google local listing on the map for many keywords. Is there something obvious that I am missing? Any help would be very appreciated.
Search Behavior | | CKerr0 -
A grade website
I started to optimize my personal Blog and portfolio website and all of my on page reports for the keywords "photography" and "Colorado Springs" were A's. What are the benefits and how much is taken in consideration by Google's algorithm? Website http://clotairedamy.com
Search Behavior | | clotairedamy0 -
Spam like visits to website
I am having a problem where I'm getting an enormous amount of unique visitors that bounce from a small area in Oregon even though we never market there. It appears to be some type of ping. It messes up our tracking and inflates the bounce rate. Is there a way to block this? I'm OK with any type of block because our reach is statewide in Florida. ANy feedback?
Search Behavior | | marksierra0 -
Website coming up in omitted results for search term?
Hi, My website is coming up in omitted results for search term. Now I have heard before if this is the case then its mainly due to a duplicate content penalty. But the content I used is unique and produced by a copywriter so its good. Its a new site and was in the results for about 2 weeks, I changed the non www to www in webmaster tools 1 day ago and now its sitting in omitted results. In webmaster tools I had to add the domain twice one non www and one www. Both accounts I hooked up a sitemap. Is it just because the site is new and its just working out where to rank me? Just so you know the non www was indexed for the 2 weeks changed it in webmaster tools so I wanted the www one indexed and now gone into omitted results. Cheers
Search Behavior | | activitysuper0