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
-
What would the US traffic increase be for a website YoY if all Google SERP rankings remained the same?
This question has come up a few times with some of our clients and I've spent some time researching this question, but I can't find an answer online so hopefully, someone at MOZ has this data available to them with all the data they collect. The data points that would be needed to answer this question off the top of my head: Increase in the # of Google Searches in the US YoY The decrease in CTR for organic results "10 blue links" which take a searcher off of Google YoY, as Google continues to keep more searchers on Google.com with rich snippets, increased AdWords prominence, AdWords extensions, etc I'm sure this greatly varies per industry, but an average for all industries is all that is needed to answer this client question. Many thanks in advance and I've included a video which hopefully helps to better explain the search "plus/minus" that we can expect to see as SEOs in 2018. WF1yLlJC6LetnpbD3
Search Behavior | | WebpageFX1 -
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 -
Does Not listing the prices on my website hurt?
Hey Mozers, I currently run a catalog type website and there are no prices listed. Would you happen to have an article of some sort that could back up why not listing prices is bad? I'm trying to express the importance of listing prices on the website. Can anyone help, The more articles the better!
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 -
Spammy website dominating SERPs! Why!?
Hey guys, I've recently noticed that a series of EMDs have been setup to completely spam an extensive set of keywords - and it seems to be working. All of the URLs are keyword targeted with tons of keyword variations. And they're getting massive ranking preference over a number of more established websites. These are just an example of some of the domains; diykitchens1.co.uk fittedkitchens1.co.uk cheapkitchens1.co.uk kitchenunits1.co.uk And then there's loads of local targeted domains such as; kitchensglasgow1.co.uk kitchensedinburgh1.co.uk Again, all of these are getting high ranking with what seems to be duplicated websites. It's pretty bizarre. Will Google penalise these sites? Surely they will?
Search Behavior | | Webrevolve0 -
How to optimize website for several US locations we service?
Hi, Our business has a few brick-and-mortar business locations, but it is servicing multiple big cities in the US, where we do not have a location, but we do business in though our independent agents (and we cannot use their locations).
Search Behavior | | SCLTeamShip
I have inherited the website, which has duplicate content for all the locations (cities and states), and I am worried about possible penalties. Every major city and state in the US has been targeted so far, but it seems pretty spammy to me- duplicate content, pages for all major US cities, pages for all states, etc. This is a B2C services website, and we can service anyone in the US. Example of pages: domain.com/services/service-from-x-city
and domain.com/services/service-from-x-state The goal is to rank locally for all the cities we are targeting. What on-page optimization should I work on besides unique content for each one? Should I consolidate some pages, and if yes, what do you recommend?
What overall strategies should I follow so I do not lose the traffic for the targeted cities?
Off-page, I am working on building local citations for these cities. Thank you.0 -
Would it be worthwhile to update URLs to include "for sale"
My team is new to the world of SEO. We were both in other departments when our last "expert" left and we became the entire department. Needless to say, we have many questions. I have a site for an existing customer - she wants to know if it is a good idea to change her URLs. She went to a webinar that suggested she include "for sale" in URL, since that is the site's primary purpose These are the current inventory URLs: http://www.dealerskinssite.com/used-inventory http://www.dealerskinssite.com/new-inventory The change would give something like: http://www.dealerskinssite.com/used-cars-for-sale
Search Behavior | | DealerskinsSearch
http://www.dealerskinssite.com/new-cars-for-sale I did some searching and could not find a solid recommendation one way or another. If it is true that people typically search for "used cars for sale" rather than a "used inventory", then there might be benefit to including that as part of the URL... but that is as far as my knowledge got me. Please let me know your thoughts Steve0 -
Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to our website
Hi, We have been using SEOmoz for a good few months now and have found it incredibly useful. Unfortunately however I think we may have slipped up a little bit as we have just received the following message in our Google Webmaster Tools: Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://www.refreshcartridges.co.uk/ I have a funny feeling I might know what the problem is but I'd like a confirmation before I potentially go off on a wild goose chase. We also own the domain name www.computerarticles.co.uk and recently started introducing the author at the bottom of the post along with both a link to the website homepage and a link to a deep, popular page on our website. For example, check out http://www.computerarticles.co.uk/twitter-time-saving-tools/ We genuinely didn't realise this was a bad thing and thought it would just provide Google with a way of deep linking straight in to popular areas of our site. I would really appreciate advice as to whether you think it might be these links that are causing the problem or whether there is something else that could be causing the problem. In the event it is these links that are causing the issue would you recommend removing the entire 'about the author' page (as we have published around 500 pages on that site) and simply put a link in the blog roll or simplify it to just link to the homepage. I appreciate in advance any help you could give. Regards Chris
Search Behavior | | ChrisHolgate0