Value Of Forum Backlinks TEST COMPLETED

I have always wondered myself the value of "forum signature links". -- So I decided to do a little test

Hope you all enjoy and can find it helpful...

***Note my test is only related to the value of forum links for SERPs purposes not traffic.***

I know many of you have similar, yet varied and or contradicting opinions about forum signature links and they range from:

A) They are meaningless and/or obsolete i.e. a waste of time.

B) They are meaningless and/or obsolete i.e. a waste of time - only if they are no follow

C) They are a back link that cannot hurt you, but the help you gain from them is extremely minimal.

D) They provide help, but other higher quality links out weigh them by a huge margin - in other words don't put more than 5-10% of your link building strategies into them, concentrate finding relevant back links from domains, not self created blogs, forums, or guest books etc.

E) My new found opinion, they have bearing! And much more than I would have ever expected!!! It's actually rather exciting!!


Many of you may have seen my signature over the past 30 days or so in this forum - keep in mind my domain's topic is completely unrelated and I did nothing with the domain outside of this test and a couple very minor/technically obsolete extras.

It looks like this --->

Best place to shop online for all Jewelry, Diamond Rings, Engagement Rings , three stone rings and more.
(NOTE: If anyone follows this link please don't assume I have done anything beyond a days work on the domain It's an experiment right now )

1. I have only 3 crappy one post blogs (self created) - motime, vox, googlepages + one link from wikia search's white list.
2. A single link I made posting my URL in a completely unrelated blog as a comment (PR0) i might add - podcurry
3. A few links from my domain itself, linking back to the homepage (internal links).
4. AND 100 links from this forum via my signature.

See the All the 110 or so Back Links listed in Yahoo HERE

Now I suppose you're wondering what did I gain and where is the proof of its success?

First, let me mention I am using a common template that is nearly all internal links to product pages with little to no content other than image captions and no H1 or H2 tags etc, in fact my Title Tag and Description don't even display in the Search engine results.

I show proof and will disclose shortly that I rank #2 for KW
- Engagement Rings - (NOT SOME LONG TAIL KW or by any means an AVERAGE KW - this is a 500 million+ a year online industry)

In the SERPs for this KW my site doesn't even show my TITLE (just the site name) or my meta description. It actually only displays the template's default description -- "My Meta Description" ...LOL.

Check this link to see what I mean:

http://search.live.com/results.aspx...rch&form=CHROME


Conclusion:

After my test I have found forum links either:

A) Have a lot of weight and bearing that many of you hate to admit is true ( Remember, I too was not a believer until now)

B) Having a brand able domain containing your KW's and using the URL or KW as anchor text has a lot of weight no matter where the link come from (other than bad links farms etc.) - Sketchy according to majority of you...

C) Have no bearing and I'm just lucky, or my two crappy blogs I created, and my blog comment really did it all for me...LOL. Yeah ok...

And finally

D) To the pessimists out there -- "Well it's not Google!!" - Anyone can do this in MSN...come on. As a side note I am also ranking for various three word key phrases in Google and have a a top 200 ranking for "Engagement Rings" - in less than 45 days I might add, with a lot of tough competition.

---For a KW like this, give me a break!--- It should be noted this ranking has stuck for 30 days + and nearly all of the other top ten sites have moved all over the place practically daily.


So the way I see it, these links must have more weight than we have ever expected!

Hope you all found this helpful and that in opened some minds!!!

MadisonSEO

Cheers


DISCLAIMER: THIS TEST WAS NOT CREATED TO ENCOURAGE YOU SHOULD ABUSE VARIOUS FORUMS ( IN PARTICULAR THIS ONE) PLEASE USE GOOD JUDGMENT AND STICK TO USING THEM FOR WHAT THEY ARE HERE FOR -TO SHARE OPINIONS AND LEARN. NOT ONLY TO POST YOUR SIGNATURE LINKS. THIS WAS A TEST SIMPLY TO SHOW THEY HAVE MORE VALUE THAN MOST ASSUME. USE YOUR MORAL INSTINCTS - DON'T ABUSE THE PRIVILEGE!

Good Test and thanks for making it like experiment as experiments gives the accurate results.

Hey Madison,

At the onset, I would like to thank you for putting in effort for this test and posting your findings here.

Now, firstly, I don't see your site in the top 20 sites in Google, Yahoo or MSN for the keyword "Engagement Rings"

Secondly, you may indeed get some ranking advantage in Yahoo and MSN through forum links since Yahoo and MSN still values sitewides. But for Google, it devalues forum links largely simply because of the fact that such links are easy to get.

Anyways, thanks again and keep up the spirit.

You obviously didn't look to hard bud.

I am number 2 for MSN for "Engagement Rings"
If you read my test more carefully you would have seen that I mentioned I have some "three word key phrases" for Google with this domain in the top 20. And that "Engagement Rings" is indexed and is usually around 200 in the past week or so.

You're talking away the proof that these links have value. Regardless if they have enough strengh to rank you high in Google I don't know and am certainly skeptacle. BUT TELL ME "Engagement Rings" is not a difficult KW in any engine! MY POINT was if you can rank over sites like BlueNile.com (280 million in sales in 2006) with only forum links and only 100 with only three crappy blogs as well. They have much more value that people make it seem.

I didn't think they had value before either, but this proves me and many others wrong, including yourself. I am Ranked Number 2 for "Engagement Rings" in MSN. Am i proud of the spot, a little, do I give sh*t about MSN? NO. But I out ranked sites with teams and teams of SEO's with million dollar budgets wtih some measly forum links. If that wasn't a successful test. I don't know what it is. Frankly I'm offended you didn't read the test thoroughly enough before you shot it down and summed it up as "well MSN and Yahoo may value them more" - you're not seeing the big picture. This was done in 30 days with 99% forum links, outranking huge companies!!! Then you don't even look closely enough at the rankings before implying I'm a liar or a bull****ter who would waste his time. I only shared this because it came as a shock to me, I wasn't trying to prove anything but to myself, I was showing members they may be worth more than we all think (forum links)

See MSN results snapshot here please - and remember - NO TITLE - NO Description - Just 100 forum links - Number 2 for a keyword that makes you a few thousand dollars a week. Give me a break dude!!! Come on now

http://adsensetricks.org/images/Num...gementRings.jpg

(Zoom in if needed)

or search live.com or msn.com yourself.

MadisonSEO... for the record: I don't see the results anymore. Have the rankings dropped at your end as well?

I'm sure it wasn't a New Sites Boost, but it might explain a bit about how Live.com's algo works.

PS: I must say I love testing like this

Its been there for almost 30 days maybe a bit more.

I'm going to log on to my servers in arizona, New York and California. I'll see what I find, you all saw the screen shot thought no?

BRB with my findings, the traffic is certainly there....hmmm.

I just checked Five different locations Arizona, Cali, New York, Madison, WI and Fitchburg, WI. I see # 2 everywhere. Is there a multiple data center check like mcdar for MSN? Can anyone who does not see engagementrings . net as number 2 in live.com or msn.com for "engagement rings" please email me a screen shot? Or upload it and post it.

My email is nextwavellc@gmail.com, Thanks.

Also where those of you from that cannot see it? The US? OR...

Hey Madison,

You took my post in a wrong way mate.

My intention was not to debunk your claims that forum links have no value or you are a moron or a liar.

I said that it is known that MSN and Yahoo values site-wides more than Google. And going by the definition of site-wides, forum links are also valuable to MSN and Yahoo.

I didn't say that forum links have no value - I said it carries more value for MSN and Yahoo than Google. Another thing, as you have mentioned, KID [keyword in domain] plays a significant role in MSN and Yahoo ranks.

Now for Google, you might also get away with site-wides in Google, but temporarily..until Google recognizes that the link it is crediting you for, are one of hundreds coming from the same domain. It usually takes some time for Google to recognize site-wides since not all of those 100 links get crawled simultaneously.

Going by your experiment, I would rather conclude that:

1. Site-wides [in any form] as long as they are not nofollowed carries significant ranking value for Yahoo and MSN.

2. Domain names having targeted keywords get additional advantage in Yahoo and MSN.


As for Google, I would encourage you to make another 1000 posts having that link in your sig and see if your site appears within the first 30 results for the term "Engagement Rings"[you can't get links from any other source during this time though]. I know engagement rings is a tough nut to crack and it's good news that you got to # 2 in MSN for that keyword [I see it now from my home PC] But ranking at 200 in Google doesn't prove Google giving much importance to forum links.


Again, I appreciate your efforts in carrying out such experiments and this experiment really does prove something. I am not against you, neither your test. I am just stating what I feel. Sorry if that dissapointed you.

Well... run your test a while longer... and don't post.

The sustainable value you get from forum sigs is equal to the most exposed posts, where those ly in the domain, and you get diminishing returns over time.

This means that "in order to get continuing return" from any one forum you need to post frequently [to get the best linkable like 5 best thread or 5 newest threads]...

and being an active member of a single forum won't help much so you need to be active in a growth trend of new forums and seriously almost all forums don't allow spam so you got to be a respect "active" member of 1, then 2, then 5, then 10, then 50, then 100 to get a set great links... and that isn't managable.


The problem with "controlled tests" on really meaningless anchor terms is that they truly are meaningless... the only thing you proved is what we already know... "links imporve ranks" and just about any link has "some value" but "just some value useful for not-so-useful-terms isn't what a domains needs".

I have 20K posts in 20 odd forums - and have proven 'as you' Google will follow any link on a page it crawls and credits that accordingly... but what you are ignoring is the fact that (try looking at this from gaining links from any other website):

1. forum pages tend to have far more than 100 links per page - surely if you won't accept a link from a links page with 100+ links - how much more value does a forum page have? Surely Google doesn't "BOOST" forum links.

2. pages that get buried daily don't produce much... and any active forum get hundreds of new pages daily - that tends to make yours "buried" pretty quickly.

3. Supplemental results - you can be sure that 99% of all sig links are on pages that are in supplemental results... these don't work for links so only the most recent post help [for a time] but because your search term is "off the beaten path" for search queries you don't need anything but the content on your test "link to page" and "1 link" and you have a positive...

A false positive IMHO - because the limited value you get from any forum... it really limited... a real waste of time.

Don't post if sig link value is the reason - the domain who gewts your comments gets substantially more return than you for a link from it.

...and sales increase as well - right?

If not - the extra traffic had what valued? Nothing?

Case in point - I've got 20K posts in a dozen or so forums... tell me where to point my sig links [where available] and for what terms - and we can see some real impacts on ranks, traffic, and sales [or not]