Do Forum signature links really work?

As I heard from beginning, signiture links in forums helps to improve link popularity...
I haven't added the link anywhere except on forum sign and when I searched for the links there have been no link results...
So I was wondering whether these links help or does it take time for them to appear?

Of course, it works. When you post links in powerful forums, and when you post valuable posts.
Better make good use of it,and take care of spamming.I'd like to do advertising for my site too.But really hate spammer,anyway.
Good luck,BradPitt.

Hey it works for me too. Forum posting is one way of getting backlinks for your site.

Forums sig is really work in a way of improving of link popularity, it gives more backlink to your site.

In some cases, forum owners add "nofollow" to the links, so spiders will not crawl them. OZZU is one such forum. Not all forums do that though. In those cases where "nofollow" is in place, you will not get backlinks so all the hogwash about link popularity is out the door on that one.

Even if they are "nofollow" forum signatures can be very beneficial. My signature is on over 20,000 posts here and even though it isn't indexed by the search engines, OZZU has long been my best referrer for both links in my signature.

When you are an active participant in a forum, friendly and helpful, people do notice you and visit your websites.

On the flip side, if all you do is make useless posts to increase your post count, no one feels compelled to visit the sites in your signature. Additionally, this behavior often raises a red flag to moderators and is likely to result in your signature being removed.

Here are the stats (via Google Analytics) for the Picksel link in my signature from January 1st 2009 to April 21st 2009. (111 days)



The signature is pretty targeted and the destination page is an intermediary page between here and the source code, so I expect the bounce rate to be high.


//Edit -- Better yet, here's the stats going back to August 8th 2008. (257 days)



I don't remember when I added the Picksel link to my signature, but I'm sure it wasn't the same day I wrote that post and in any event Ozzu still outpaces any other referer to that page by a ratio of roughly 10:1.

I believe even if there is a nofollow tag to your signature link, you should use signature links, becoz, the more you post, the more you get visible to others and thus many might get interested and click on your signature link.

Forum signature are the good source of making one way links for the website. A good number of valuable post in forums are definitely helpful.

Yes they do work if the forum is sig link friendly. Most are not its a way of blocking spam.

Yes it works. It helps in increasing back links as well as traffic to your website.

Make Sure you participate in discussion in forums rather than marketing your website product or service.

Prove it. Did you read what I posted earlier? And lets say a forum doesn't have a nofollow in place and a user like me places 20,000 some odd posts on the forum, so are they going to get backlinked? Don't worry about answering that, because I can tell you before OZZU changed to nofollow, my links here were backlinked but Google changed that algorithm before that even happen and they dropped off the map.

I don't understand those of you that think forum backlinks do anything for you on PR. Can they help your traffic? Yes. for reasons I stated prior. But to think posting redundantly on a forum is going to help you to me is a complete mistake.

Why do you think there are moderators at forums? Moderators are there to stop the kind of spam that exists from people thinking that spamming their crappy sites is going to help them. Geez. Wake up people!

I think Google Webmaster Tools are misleading as far as links go. For instance GWT says I have thousands of "external links" from Ozzu, but if I look at that via "link:domain.com" those links are nowhere to be found.

Something similar happens with another forum I visit. Now, I know Ozzu applies nofollow, but this other forum does not. Same deal, hundereds of external links in GWT, but only a few dozen via "link:domain.com".

On the other hand, with a third forum, I know there isn't any nofollow applied, but links don't show up in GWT, "link:domain", or anywhere else I've ever looked.

Links are strange creatures, it seems impossible to tell for sure what they're going to do until it happens.

Not to mention, the rules are in a whole different book when it comes to search engines other than Google.

Yes it matters especially when you are posting on your targeted users and it is do-follow.

yea forum signatures really do well and can gain traffic too if the forum is very active. many webmaster even purchase sig links on active forums