Backlinks from forum posts - Always PR 0 ?

[Sebastien]

Hey folks,

So I was reading somewhere that it is generally a good idea to get backlinks from forums with hight PRs like Digital point etc..

What I don't understand is that although the forum homepage will have a PR of 7 or whatever, as soon as you enter the categories section and then open an individual thread, the PR of that page will almost always drop to 0.

When we post we're only getting a backlink from that PR 0 page and not the homepage right ?

-- Sebastien

[PPP]

PR is page based. It doesn't matter what the PR of main page of a domain is. The only thing that matters is the PR of the actual URL your link is on.

Links from individual forum threads are generally useless.

[mupha]

Originally Posted by PPP

PR is page based. It doesn't matter what the PR of main page of a domain is. The only thing that matters is the PR of the actual URL your link is on.

Links from individual forum threads are generally useless.

Useless for passing PageRank, yes, but PR is not a SERPs ranking factor whereas even a low PR backlink from a page with relevant content (providing that page is indexed of course) has the potential to create a small - often very small - positive effect on SEPRs.

[Sebastien]

Ok Thanks-

So let's say the forum is about Wordpess themes for example..

If you have a signature with a couple of phrases about poker and 1 or 2 backlinks, would Google view these as topical links ?

-- Sebastien

[haynesey]

They wouldn't be topical.

Although i suppose you can make them "on topic" by adding a long signature say.

For the best poker bonuses we suggest checking out (site name) for poker bonuse codes, poker bonus news, poker reviews and other poker related stuff.

Then add links in between.

But all in all, i think there only good for getting pages crawled.

[SunPoker.com]

I view forum signatures with your site URL included more as another form of online marketing than a linking strategy. For example, suppose you hang out at 2+2 and suppose they allowed you to include your site URL for your signature (I know they don't), and you made various posts that contributed positively to the community. You answered questions relating to strategy, or your thoughts on poker rooms, etc, etc...people that frequented that forum would begin to trust your word more and more.

Chances are they would eventually check out your site in your signature out of curiosity and because you have good things to say on the forums. That's just more traffic for your site.

Mark

[PPP]

Originally Posted by mupha

Useless for passing PageRank, yes, but PR is not a SERPs ranking factor whereas even a low PR backlink from a page with relevant content (providing that page is indexed of course) has the potential to create a small - often very small - positive effect on SEPRs.

PR is a major SERPs ranking factor. It remains the cornerstone of it in fact, though anchor text is more important.

A forum link from a page with "relevant" content will have virtually no effect at all, and that effect could be positive or even negative. Google isn't perfect, but they are not morons. They know things like signature links should be completely ignored in the same way blog comments should be. A webmaster adding his own link to some webpage shows no value at all and, if possible, onviously should be completely ignored.

Websites with extremely high ratios of garbage forum links are setting themselves up for a negative link profile. If a search engine thinks a webmaster is the only one running around the Internet saying "hey, I'm cool", they are not going to be very impressed, and very possibly will view the domain as a spammy "link scheme", which is basically the intention of such a webmaster.

having sig links probably will make no difference unless you have unique link text like "elegant yak automobiles" or something like that. As Mark said, sigs should be viewed like they were intended - to say who you are and invite humans to check you out.

(Plus, yes, they will help a small amount with getting pages crawled... which suggests sig links to obscure, deep pages make more sense than links to the main page of a domain or another high profile one that gets crawled via 100s of links from your own domain.)

[mypokercorner]

Originally Posted by PPP

PR is a major SERPs ranking factor. It remains the cornerstone of it in fact, though anchor text is more important.

Explain?

I was under the impression that link strategy is the cornerstone of SERP, and that also happens to affect PR as a secondary effect. In other words, it's the links that affect the SERP and the PR, but not the PR that affects the SERP.

[BootyCraze]

PPP is using the page rank term loosely. What he means is the link juice you can get from a particular page means more than the main page of a site. The site probably has a trust factor but might not carry well further down.

Forum posts can be good if you hit a great topic early and the page gets a mass load of links to it.

[PPP]

I'm using the term page rank literally, not loosely. PR is the result of a mathematical equation that combines volume of links with quality of links. the resulting value is one of the many things, but one of the more important ones, that leads to the search results lists.

"Link strategy" covers many things, including getting and distributing PR, proper anchor text, not being in bad neighborhoods, etc. It's not a single item that is weighted that leads to the results. It's strategy to build a healthy page or domain.

Results are the consequence of scoring. All pages earn a score for a particular query. PR of a page contributes to its score. Relevance, synonyms, anchor text, H1 tags, and much more also effect a page's score for a particular query.