Be a Better Link Builder - Use Forum Signatures
Posted by Lucas under Blogging, Search Engine Optimization 21 commentsThis is a guest post by Rob from Iron Blogger.
I have talked numerous times on using keywords on blogs to get better search engine traffic; however, I have not talked about using forum signatures as a tool for getting better keyword results. This method is very quick and easy to implement and best of all, it is free. All it will take is a few moments of your time and a little bit of patience on your part.
The Value of Forums
The reason why this method is so effective is because forums are usually sites that have a high PR value, get lots of traffic, and rank very well in search engines. By using keywords in your signatures, you are getting free high valued links back to your blog with the keywords of your choice.
Many online marketers fail to see the value of using forums to promote their blogs. If you use your blog to promote your product, then why not use forums to promote you blog? Makes sense, doesn’t it?
If you happen to find a few popular forums in your niche, or that are just blogging related, you could begin to rank your blog higher in Google just by putting links in your signature. Use this method with many of the other link building methods and you are on your way to getting some pretty decent SEO results.
One thing that you should take note of: The forums must not have the nofollow tag attached to signature links. Otherwise your efforts would be rendered useless.
Here is an example:
Let’s say you have a blog that is about making money online. Ideally, you may want to target a keyword that is along the lines of “Make Money Blogging” or something similar to that. Once you get your keyword that you want to target, search for popular forums that are ether blogging related or that are about making money online. If you need a few examples, I use Bloggeries, Blog Premiere, and Digital Point.
Once you find a few forums that you wish to use, you can then use them to promote your keywords of your choice. You may want to put the anchor text to something like “Make Money by Blogging” in your signature and put the link pointing back towards your blog.
The Long Term Effect
Although this may not affect your SEO ranking right away, over time you will notice that these high valued links will start to add up, especially if you sign up to many forums and contribute a lot. You just need to make sure you use similar keywords. So, if your blog is about dog food, don’t try to use keywords that are about tennis. I’m pretty sure that is just common sense, but I’ll include it in there anyway.
If you follow this technique pattern, you would definitely rank higher in the search engines for the keywords of your choice. If you manage to get a higher SEO ranking then that would mean more traffic for you. If you manage to get more traffic then that would give you more opportunities to grow your blog. If you are trying to make any kind of money off of blogging, then you would be needing a lot of traffic!
This is a neat little method that I recently discovered. I hope that this was something new to you, and you learned something today. 
Readers have left 21 comments on "Be a Better Link Builder - Use Forum Signatures".
Great post, I have been using my signatures this way for quite some time, but even more than the seo factor I love the human factor. If you can help somebody on a forum or provide people with information relevant to the topic often times they will click on the links in your signature. I have gained many referrals and readers to my blog from my forum signatures.
Adam
Adam - Creadiv’s latest blog post… Customer Service Isn’t Dead
Thanks for commenting, Adam. I, too, have gained referrals from forums.
@Rob, good job on the post…
I’ve been using my signature in digital point for seo purpose but I am not yet sure if it really helps. It also give additional traffic
Hussein’s latest blog post… Question and Answer Round 1
As they say, every little link helps.
I get a little bit of traffic from forums…though to be honest I don’t post much…forums bore me a little. I prefer blogs (which I comment on a lot).
I doubt you see many forum pages with high page rank though. This is a little unrealistic to expect. Maybe in a year you might see some SEO increasings from thousands of posts.
Why not outsource them and get other people to post for you?
Forums are definately a cheaper way to get traffic , but you need to be very aggressive in posting on forums to get any sold traffic to your site
The traffic from forums is less than other sources, but at the same time, if the forum fits well with your niche, the traffic you do get is quality - the subscribers vs. the one hit wonders.
Kristi’s latest blog post… Rubber Band
I too get much human interaction from forums, I didn’t even think of the SEO factor until now….something to think on, thanks.
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Glad you liked the post :).
Forums are an excellent way to build links. It’s a shame some people don’t use them to the potential they could be.
IronBlogger’s latest blog post… More Link Love In The Blogosphere
bloggeries signatures results very well in bringing visitors to our sites hehe
Nice post. Have been doing this for a while, but only the sad thing is that people don’t use it properly, and many of them just “SPAM” the forums with their signatures, and it get’s annoying.
Great post, although I do think that forum signatures hold hardly any value, it could be that little bit that puts you past your competitor, so its worth it in that sense!
Yes, spam is always a big pain in the ass to deal with. Everyone hates it.
I can’t see why people don’t take the time to make good comments. I mean you don’t even have to care, but using spam will get you no where.
Im not so sure it gives a lot of SEO value but as far as long term SEO is concern it definitely helps…
To me, long term SEO is what really matters, because there isn’t very much short term SEO tactics. Ether way your going to have to wait.
I don’t do much forum posting only two at the moment but I made lots of good friends there. But you’re right to say that SEO and link building is a long term process so forum posting is here to stay for me too.
Peter Lee
and what i like about forums is that each post generates multiple backlinks, depending on the number of links with your signature. as opposed to commenting, where at most you get maybe 2.
Yes, that is very true!
I have implemented these ideas and well I haven’t seen any immediate results. But there is some traffic from forums.
Mico-blogging sites like twitter can also bring in a lot of traffic to your blog.
Is Digital Point a do follow forum? How about Sitepoint?
One of the best way to get free traffic.
I have been practicing this idea, but not seeing that much results. Maybe not that immediate but I think itll help as well as backlinks.
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