Power of our signature links at REW?

[coastal]

For those of us who have been here a long time with a ton of posts how much are our signature links worth? Will redirecting them to another site for a few weeks make any difference in that sites rank? Will it adversely affect a site if the link is removed? I guess I could just do it myself and look for any difference but I was wondering if any of you had already done it and noticed any change? It's only one link so I would not expect much difference but you never know.

[20something RE Guy]

You could always try and find out.......

[NealRM]

Yes it will make a difference on both sites. How much of a difference depends on how many other sites also link to those sites.

[Ryan Ward]

Let's say you have a lot of posts....like me I suppose.

I've changed my signature a few times and have not seen much affect on ranking. Where it currently says atlanta real estate blog in the signature, it used to point to my luxury real estate page with the anchor text "atlanta luxury real estate". That was about a year ago I made the change to the link. My position for that page on that term did not ever change.

Whether this is typical or not, I'm not sure. It's not really enough information. However, there is more to consider. Some of these older forum posts are not likely spidered all that often although some may get recached fairly quickly. However, you can make all of the changes that you want, but, until the page is recached, it really hasn't changed. Then there is the question about how long it actually takes for a "new" link to affect the rankings.

So, to answer your question, maybe, maybe not. It would like get a new site cached more quickly.

I wouldn't do it as there is something to be said for the length of time a link has been pointing to a certain place. I don't see any sense in starting the clock ticking on a link all over again.

[webmaster]

Ryan, in your case your have multiple links to the same domain, which would be a different situation, than linking to other domains (multiple links from the same site to the same site are less valued IMHO)

[Ryan Ward]

I agree about the domains, but, I only had one when I set up my links. I'm not going willy nilly and changing anything like that now.

My experience was little change although that would certainly be different for someone with a different link profile than myself.

[webmaster]

Well here, how about I test it for you guys (although this won't really count because i will link to a brand new blog post on REW) but at least we can see if the links are being recognized. Anchor text I will choose (so that I can test it) "Sarasota Association of Realtors"

[webmaster]

Signature updated

[calzephyr]

Great idea!!

I'm interested to see the effects/results of the test.

Go get 'em Morgan

-Tom W.

[coastal]

Thanks Morgan.

I have to admit the more I learn the less I think I know.

There are times I can have a new site indexed within a matter of days and ranking well (for a non competitive keyword) the same day the page is indexed. I,ve seen some of my blog articles indexed within minutes of posting.

In the old days this would take me three months or longer. Remember the days of submitting to google.. and praying? LOL, I've come a long way but I still have a long way to go. I have not yet created a 1,2,3 system which I can replicate time after time to get sites ranked well and although my sites usually do end up ranked well I'm not always 100% sure how I did it or which of the things I did packed the most bang for the buck.