Is this link spam?

[Step9]

If I put URL as signature of forum.
Is this link spam?

Please, Make me sure.
A lot of people do this.

[mcanerin]

Some forums allow this and even encourage it as a "reward" for contributing. These are often forums that are brand new or hardly have any members, and are trying to build up membership throug bribes. (My opinion, of course, and there are probably exceptions).

Other forums (like this one) don't allow it, but do allow a link in your profile, and even others (like HighRankings) allow signatures that registered members can see but that visitors and search engines can't, still other forums nofollow them.

It's up to the individual forum on whether they are allowed and how they are handled. Obviously if you have a sig that is not indexed by search engines it can't possibly be search engine spam.

For indexed sigs, it appears that they do seem to make a very small difference, but I haven;t seen anyone accomplish anything competitive with signature links for years. It would mostly be the effect of the anchor text, rather than the PR, I suspect.

Search engines are aware of them and each has decided to handle them in their own way.

Sig and profile links can be very handy for humans who want to learn more about the person posting. Since this is a very helpful, human-oriented method that existed before search engines, I don't beleive it's considered spam, by itself.

But it's not really an effective link building method, either. Links in the content of posts work better, but of course then they are looked at by members and moderators. Just this morning, I've already deleted 2 posts and banned a member who was link dropping without contributing.

If it's useful, on-topic, and you are a contributing member of a forum, then feel free to link - it's what makes the web work!

But try not to do it in your first few posts - that makes most mods get very suspicious. It's our job to help keep the forum a valuable place that people want to come to.

Ironically, the very thing that makes people like forums is the very thing that makes link spammers like them, which in turn destroys the value in the first place. Mods and members usually try to resist that.

Sorry to go on, I'm in a philosophical mood today...

Ian

[Step9]

Oh your describe.Thank a lot.

I have thousands post in some place with favorite web.
Yesterday, some one to warn me about link spam like this.

I don't hurt that web(not mine).
Now I changed link.

Example
http://www.google.co.th/]http://www.google.co.th/--> google.co.th
:)

[mcanerin]

If you happen to have a signature link and post a lot, then that's fine as far as a search engine is concerned, as long as the forum and your posts are legitimate.

I have more than a thousand posts in this forum and almost two thousand at another forum, and at both of them I'm not even in the top 10 posters. If you spend a lot of time contributing, then it's normal to have a lot of posts. No problem.

Just don't expect every one of those links to count fully.

Ian

[SEOWizard]

I think in the context of a recommendation, links surrounded by relevant text must rank in someway with the engines. After all, if people are pointing links to a website (either from a forum or a website) in a legitimate way it *must* count.

[mcanerin]

A signature isn't a recommendation - it's a signature.

It's automatically added to everything you say, whether it's on topic or not, whether it's a work of brilliance or a stupid joke. Further, it's added by the poster, typically to the posters own sites - also not a candidate for a third party recommendation.

For example, if you added a signature to your posts here, it would NOT be a recommendation by SEW of your site - it's a recommendation by you. Search engines are aware of this.

If they were not, they'd probably have to consider forums and blogs as Free For All (FFA) link farms, since anyone can sign up and add links whenever they want. But of course that's not what's really going on.

Like a footer, it's not considered spam because it's navigational/informative in nature (it lets others know who you are, or is supposed to), but appears to be discounted (not ignored, discounted).

Whether this discount is based on MS's BLA or something simple like repetition recognition is up to each search engine, of course.

You can add them, and they will help a little (more in MSN) sometimes, (if they are indexed at all) but don't expect them to be treated as independent, topical links by a reputable third party, because they are not.

This is different from links inside the content of your posts, which appear to be treated as actual links and recommendations, as they should be.

Hypothetical question: if a forum owner added, as part of a template, a link to his/her favorite site automatically to each post in their forum, should that count as legitimate links? Why or why not? What's wrong with templates? Is a signature file a template?

Ian