I wonder whether it is still worth it to post in a forum namex in which the Google page rank is 0 even though the page rank of the root of this forum might have page rank 7.
Considering that the forumx page has page rank 0, Is it still any worth it to post posts in the forumx1 with signatures that include links to the website whose SEO we want to improve? If so, why? How does Google check this? just by checking the web page where the link is? or does it also consider the page rank of the roots ([noparse]www.websitex1.com/forums/[/noparse] and [noparse]www.websitex1.com/[/noparse]) of this web page [noparse]www.websitex1.com/forums/forumx1/[/noparse] in order to assess the importance of the link that we place in the signature for the posts in [noparse]www.websitex1.com/forums/forumx1/[/noparse] ?
I wonder whether it is still worth it to post in a forum whose name is forumx1 for which the Google page rank is 0 even though the page rank of the roots of this forum might have page rank 7.
Considering that the forumx1 page has page rank 0, Is it still any worth it to post posts in the forumx1 with signatures that include links to the website whose SEO we want to improve? If so, why?
How does Google assess the importance of these signature’s links? Just by checking the web page where the link is?
It will certainly do help. It will very difficult to find related forums with high PR for each board of the forum. The trick is to start or post in a interesting thread that may get PR soon.
I had not thought about that. However, I just checked this and I saw that the home page of my profile in this forum indeed has the “no follow” tag. On the other hand the link in the signature does not seem to have “no follow” tag and therefore they would carry weight for SEO, right? Am I wrong? If so, what am I missing?
PageRank is transferred from a page, not from a site. A link on a page with PR=0 is on a page with PR=0, end of story. It doesn’t matter if the home page of the site has PR=7, it doesn’t matter if every other page on the site has PR=7, your link is on a page with PR=0, and that’s all that is taken into account.
That’s a very good question. Signature links are supposed to be ‘nofollow’, I’ll check it with Sitepoint HQ.
They are not nofollow’d. However, they are only visible to signed in members and the search engines are not signed in members, so they useless for search engines.
I despise forum posters who think like that. You post in forums because you want to be a part of the community and not because of the PR of the site!
Well, after checking the code I do not see the nofollow tag in the signatures either when I am logged in or when I am not logged in.
What am I missing?
Nice point, but many people do forum posting as a part of their link building campaign, if the links are nofollow whats the use? I see even the biggest SEO agencies do forum posting and getting results, its because they post links on dofollow forums. Also an addition, it doesn’t hurt the forum if the signatures are dofollow. I mean, users contribut the forum develop it, maintain it. The forum has to payoff the users as well.
Precisely. There is no point. We dearly wish that nobody saw forum posting as a way to gain backlinks and improve their search position, because for every person that does that, we end up with dozens if not hundreds of useless posts that add no value whatsoever to the community.
Also an addition, it doesn’t hurt the forum if the signatures are dofollow.
Oh but it does. Because the more avenues you give spammers to hock their wares and drop links everywhere, the more of them you get. They’re like flies around a pile of dung, and once they’re there and feeding, you’re stuck with them. By making signature links “nofollow” and having a large body of staff who assiduously identify and annihilate all off-topic or irrelevant links from the message itself, we make SPF unattractive to spammers. There’s nothing for them here. They might get a backlink for a couple of hours but then it’s gone forever. So we don’t get many. If we allowed people free rein to give whatever spiderable links they wanted, we would quickly be overrun with spammers making posts of no value at all, just filling them forums up with fluff and drivel to get their links out there. We don’t want that, which is why we take such a tight control over what links can be allowed and which ones can be followed.
You still can contribute in these forums…
Backlinks from forums are considered as high quality backlinks… As far as PR is concerned every web page has different PR. There is certainly no PR sculpting but you can promote your services here and build some good quality links.
Just because you have chance of having a weed in your farm doesn’t mean that you will burn down the entire farm. Maybe you could develop a system where in, a user will be allowed to place signature links in his posts after he reaches a fixed number of ’ quality ’ posts scrutinized by the moderators?
Seriously, don’t you think the staff have enough to do here already? We’re not paid for this, we give up our own time out of the goodness of our hearts to try to make Sitepoint Forums as good a community as it can be by getting rid of fluff, drivel, spam and abuse, by running competitions and by keeping the standard of debate extremely high … and that isn’t enough for you, you now want us to go further just so that you can profit from the site.
No way, José. The last thing we want to do is to encourage people who are only here to get backlinks. We want people to be here because they want to join and contribute to the community, not because they’re using it as a backdoor to boosting their position in Google.
By not allowing followed self-promotional links, we are not burning down the farm. We, as SPF, are not losing out one itty little bit by deterring people who are only in it for what they can get out of it. Having people like that here doesn’t help the forums at all.
Oh relax mate, I didn’t mean to say that. I just asked casually, my apologies I should have understood your problems. I accept my mistake, please forgive me
You have a point but finding dofollow sites nowadays are very hard to do. What more finding related, dofollow sites? It may lead you to spamming when you leave links in unrelated sites.
