Backlinks from forum posts - Always PR 0 ?

[J S]

In regards to forum links... you don't turn them down, but if that is your strategy to get links (ie actively inserting your link in forums) then you could be setting yourself up to have a negative looking link profile (as ppp said).

Forum links for traffic can be great, and can also be a great way to help an awesome article go viral though which would indeed help your seo. Just have to make sure you've got an awesome piece of content first.

[Sebastien]

Although links from forum signatures are not a long term SEO strategy, I think they might still be good for SEO.

Many believe that link recency may be a factor in the SERPS. Having a regular supply of fresh links could indeed be beneficial. I'm not saying this will make a huge difference. But if Google had to rank two idential sites:

# 1 with a link profile that is stale (no new links in weeks)
# 1 with new links everyday

I specualte that Google will rank the latter higher. Google is always looking for what is relevant and recent, so in that sense I can see forum sigs being beneficial especially if they are topical.