Do Forum Signatures Give Any SEO Benefit?

Is it possible that one link inside of a forum signature could send you to the front page of Google? Are forum signatures the key to blasting your rankings above all of your competitors? Should forum posting be part of your SEO strategy?

Ten years ago, this actually could’ve been true. Unfortunately, today forum signatures are near worthless for SEO value.

Why? Well, to start off, most forum signatures these days are nofollow, and as we know, there is little value to nofollow links in terms of SEO benefit. But what about the forums that allow dofollow links in signatures? These don’t have much value either.

First of all, these links are incredibly easy to reproduce, which makes them instantly devalued by Google. After all, you only need to make another post on that forum to have another link back to your website.

Secondly, forums often have a TON of outbound links on every page. This also drastically decreases the SEO benefit of all the links on the page.

This is why it is so important to focus on the quality of your backlinks rather than the quantity of them. One backlink embedded in quality content from a reputable website is far more valuable than even 1000 forum posts.

How Forum Signatures Are Still Useful For Driving Traffic

Now, that’s not to say that forum signatures are completely useless. In fact, quite the opposite – I have personally received over 10,000 visits from various forums from my signature alone. The thing is that today, forum signatures are only beneficial for human eyes rather than the eyes of search engines. Get people to read your signature, and they just might visit your website!

How To Make An Eye Catching Forum Signature:

1. Use images with bright but easily noticeable colors if the forum allows it.
2. Clearly state what your website is about, and why people should visit it.
3. Make sure people know where to click – make the link to your website easily visible.
4. Contribute valuable content to the website. Not only does this get more people finding the thread in search engines, it also gets more people reading your post in depth rather than simply skimming over it. When people like what you have to say, they are far more likely to visit your website.
5. Important: NEVER spam. Not only will this not add any value to the conversation, it gives a poor image to your website and may also result in getting you banned from the forum. This wastes both your time, as well as the forum admin’s time.

By following these tips, you’ll be able to create a great eye catching forum signature that will bring in slow but steady traffic for years to come.

Although forum signatures do not give any SEO benefit, they are still wonderful for bringing human visitors to your website. In the end, forum posting can be an extremely rewarding traffic method and you should definitely include it as part of your marketing strategy. You’ll thank me later!