Posting a bunch of messages in forums

[whiteRabbit]

I was reading some messages posted the other day and some guy was saying that a link included in your signature in forums do count as an internal link.  Though such a link does not count for much, it still helps rankings in search engines.  So the guy was saying that, if you post 1000s of messages, then you will actually get a pretty good rankings in search engines.  I'm wondering if posting 1000s of messages can actually help your site to get higher rankings in search engines.  Also is it really a good promotion?  Is it really effective?  It's not that I am going to participate in forums less, but I'm just curious.

[Hope]

posting your link in your signature of a forum will help a little. It helps more when the forum is of the same topic as your site. For me, I have web design and web marketing as the topics of my site, so a link in my signature here will help.

For you, I would suggest going to forums about the different schools and courses. This would bring better linking to you.

Will 1000 links help, not really. I have over 900 on another site and only about 10 are listed in google.

[SensoVision]

yeah I've totally agree with Hope, links from signatures not help much as I believe that such links treated by search engine in different way according to special algo which make them not valuable for ranking... but if you manage to get link from the front page or link page of the forum it would probably act differently.

[CoastPC]

but if you manage to get link from the front page or link page of the forum it would probably act differently.

The link Phoenix has placed on this forum to our website has really helped with "alltheweb"  Many more back links than uasual    Thanks Mate 

Chris

[SensoVision]

my pleasure it's a kind of reward for moderators who donate their time to our community. Hope it will help even more in future.

[justjeni]

I find that I'll get more hits when I participate in forums relevant to my site, but I dont' know about SE's -  I think it's just other forum users being curious.  I used to do a lot of this, but it seems lately it's not as effective.

I guess I look at it this way; wherever I can put the link,there's always a possibility someone will click on over to my site, but brother, is that time consuming!  There's no end to the forums you can find.  Then of course you get your few here and there that squak and ban you if you post your link in a sig tag, although more will allow it than not.

I guess in the end it sure can't hurt, but I wouldn't count on it as a major source of traffic.

[whiteRabbit]

I guess in the end it sure can't hurt, but I wouldn't count on it as a major source of traffic.

Just when I started promoting my site, it appeared that posting a bunch of messages in forums seemed like a good idea.  I did get number of hits from these forums in fact.  I think I still get same amount of traffic coming from signature links, but it certainly does not increase exponentially or proportionally.  In fact, the number pretty much stays the same.  As I started getting more traffic from search engines and real links in related sites, the percentage of traffic coming from signatures has decreased.  Simple math.  I don't see why we shouldn't(unless signature is prohibited) include a link to our site in our signatures, but it generally becomes more and more insignificant in a long run(there are some exceptions though).

[justjeni]

I think, too, that if you've been active in a forum for a while and have always had your link there, after a while the regulars aren't going to be clicking on it much, if at all.  Of course, there's always new members, but I'm with whiteRabbit - it does become more insignificant in the long run. 

I also find the hits from SE's and good link swaps seems much more effective as it's targeted hits, not just curious visitors - or critics! 

But again, I really don't think it ever hurts - and could even help some - and in fact, from time to time I still pop into forums related to my site content just to "update" my sig for any newcomers!  Or get it back in the forefront if it's gotten buried under new postings.

[Hope]

I get  a lot of click thrus from SEO related forums. I get no click thrus from others forums. I am an SEO and my sig clearly states that.

It really makes a difference on what kind of site you have when compared to the type of site your are posting on. They really do need to be similar or it isn't going to help.