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.
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
-
Collapsible sections - content
**Hi,****I am looking to improve the aesthetics of some pages on my website by adding written content into collapsible tabs. I was wondering whether the content that is ‘hidden’ by tabs is given less weight by Google from the perspective of SEO? **Some articles I have read suggest that tabbed content is weighted equally with the content which is already immediately visible to the user, but others suggest that this may not be the case. **Please, can I request opinions on the matter? Any advice would be greatly appreciated, many thanks.**Katarina
Technical SEO | | Katarina-Borovska0 -
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 -
Links from PubMed (nlm.nih.gov) not appearing in backlinks for articles
Content from our medical journals gets indexed by the National Library of Medicine / PubMed on a monthly basis. The link to the full article appears in the upper-right corner on PubMed, yet I'm unable to find PubMed (nlm.nih.gov) backlinks in the reporting tools. Example:
Technical SEO | | aafpitadmin
Article Title: Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infection in Children (allintitle query)
Article URL: http://www.aafp.org/afp/2011/0115/p141.html
PubMed URL: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21243988 The PubMed link is to http://www.aafp.org/link_out?pmid=21243988 ,
a 301 redirect to the article, http://www.aafp.org/afp/2011/0115/p141.html Any idea why this link isn't appearing in backlinks? This isn't just for one article, we have roughly 2,000 articles from 1998 to the present. Articles from the past 12-months are access-restricted, and after 12-months the articles become public.0 -
Generating a signature and expires in java
Hello, I am developing a tool for my company to get stats from SeoMoz using your API. During development, I have been using the example signature and expires values which are auto-generated for me. Now that testing is complete, my code will need to generate these values. I have been googling looking for a resource demonstrating how to do this using Java, but I have not found a good example. I was hoping that someone at SeoMoz would have a resource or an example that they could share. The email associated with this account belongs to a non-developer, so if a response is provided via email in addition to the forum, sending it to my email would be much appreciated. Thank you, Anthony [email protected]
Technical SEO | | TRich500 -
Optimal Structure for Forum Thread URL
For getting forum threads ranked, which is best and why? site.com**/topic/**thread-title-goes-here site.com**/t/**thread-title-goes-here site.com**/**thread-title-goes-here I'd take comfort in knowing that SEOmoz uses the middle version, except that "q" is more meaningful to a human than "t". The last option seems like the best bet overall, except that users could potentially steal urls that I may want to use in the future. My old structure was site.com/forum/topic/TOPIC_ID-thread-title-goes-here so obviously any of those would be a vast improvement, but I might as well make the best choice now so I only have to change once.
Technical SEO | | PatrickGriffith0 -
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 -
Profile creation
Can somebody suggest me good softwares for : 1. Forum profile Creation 2. Web 2.0 profile creation Thanks, KS__
Technical SEO | | KS__0 -
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