Best forums for signature backlinks?

[JimOlenbush]

What are your favorites?

[Markz]

Along the same lines, If you have backlinks from another forum does it make any difference if it is property related or not?

[Smuck]

Along the same lines, If you have backlinks from another forum does it make any difference if it is property related or not?

For what it is worth, any link is a good link except those that come from bad neighborhoods.

Obviously, there are better links than others. This is a great post on what to consider regarding link quality considerations.

[webmaster]

Errrr - I never advocate participating in forums strictly for links - instead, try to make a short list of forums where you can actually either learn something, or build true relationships (These can be local sites, real estate sites, niche specific sites for something you are interested in etc) - there needs to be a lot more in it for you than a link if you are going to dedicate the time to make contributing to any forum worth it.

A good real life example would be the local forum we run for our city Nanaimo, British Columbia. http://www.nanaimoinformation.com/forum/

Here a local Realtor could get in front of a very relevant and local audience, and perhaps even get more than just business out of it (Friendships, or maybe they are an outdoors buff, or a photography fan etc) there are lots of things that make our local forum great.

Now our city is not huge - but we have over 3% of the total population as members at the forum, and if you were to figure out how many of our population are actually home buyers, the % would go up because obviously our stats count children and the very elderly, which were not be home buyers AND would likely not be members at the forum.

The Realtor could have a signature link, and would get link juice from it BUT this is probably the least important reason for that Realtor to be there.

[JimOlenbush]

My fault - I should have clarified my comment or worded if differently. I agree that it would be a bad idea to seek out forums and post just for the potential of some small gain in links. (not to mention boring) I was just wondering what other forums people were using and learning from, and if they felt they were also getting the additional benefit of links.

The discussion about the SERP value of the links from this forum seems to come up all of the time and the no-follows are debated. I just wondered if people had other forums they felt the same way about. Most of the other forums I frequent are non real estate related and I don't have any real estate links in my signature for that reason. I think the value of forum links are overrated as it is, but was just curious what places others were enjoying and if they felt they were benefiting in those additional ways.

[jessiesc]

Personally,

I think this topic and traffic for links was inevitable.

Ever since the hand-job fiasco, all you hear about now is "quality one-way links". Every link hungry site is now out looking for a freebie link rather than contributing something useful to the valuable forums such as this.

IMO, try focusing on promoting the website with good content, authority and articles rather than hunting down freebie links. Offer some valuable insights on the forums and contribute because you want to, not because of the link you'll get out of it!

It takes the same amount of time and provides a much better experience for your visitors.

[ericbramlett]

Jim -

IMO, city-data.com is a good place to participate & get backlinks - but you can't control your anchor text. You just get a "my website" link for every post. I have picked up clients in the past who saw my posts on city-data & looked me up.

The moderators over there are horrible, though.

Another one that is decent for the links is realestateforum.com, but the conversation usually isn't that great.

[coastal]

I hate to admit it but I've been guilty of forum spam in the past. I've never been as blatant as some of the characters we find around here at REW who are usually banned in under 5 posts...

I used to find any forum that I had any personal interest in and just add a post here or there for a week or two, later I'd add my sig, then later I'd throw in some anchor text. When you look at all the time it took I could have been writing decent article for a blog and getting much better results.

Then again if you can write some good articles at a forum that don't look like spam you may send a few clients your way. My market has a lot of retirees moving to it for tax reasons. I know a real estate webmaster who shall remain nameless who used to spend some time on the aarp forum promoting his home state as a great place to retire to

[JimOlenbush]

Thank you Eric!

Out of the forums I visit I spend most of my time here, but I do occasionally check in on MotoGP and Superbike racing forums, firearms forums, watch forums, etc. I don't have a signature on any of those. I do post occasionally on forums . kiplinger . com and I have a signature set up there. There are a few really knowledgeable posters there that share great investment info, but they also have some spammers and it can be a little "slow" in there. I did notice that the links from that forum do seem to "get counted" for what it is worth.

I just wanted to say again that I don't think the forum signature links are very important, just a tiny little extra boost from some of the forums. I have stated that in all the threads concerning "jumps when I hit 300", etc. I should have made that clear in the beginning of this thread!! Since so many seem to think this forum gave them a huge boost when they hit 300, I wondered what other places people spent their time chatting. I hope I didn't send the wrong message with this thread.

[Homesurfer]

IMO, city-data.com is a good place to participate & get backlinks - but you can't control your anchor text.

When quality sites allow the "linked-to" site to control the anchor text in links, they are on the road to becoming "spammy" sites. That's because everyone starts to insert "spammy" anchor text.

I'm not talking about forums. That's a different animal.