Webmaster Forum - View Single Post - Backlinks

I, Brian · 10-31-2003, 02:42 AM

For a while I thought that signature links were an easy way to build up PR and - especially - get good anchor text to help page rankings.

However, after a few months experimentation, signature links are pretty worthless as backlinks.

Not only are the links usually poorly weighted, so that PR transfer is extremely limited - but, also, Google does not appeart to care for the number of backlinks from any site, as much as the number of different sites being linked from.

Not only that, Google seems to be clustering themes - ie, for your backlinks to be of any real worth, then your backlinks must be from other sites covering the same or similar topics.

Although signature links are a good way to form anchor text, without being applied in content then as site backlinks they will have almost no effect in terms of either their number or PR movement.

Signature links still remain an important way to direct human traffic to a sites. However, they are, in effect, almost worthless for Google rankings. Google insists that quality, not quantity, is more important.

10-31-2003, 02:42 AM	#1 (permalink)
I, Brian Inactive Join Date: 10-26-03 Posts: 2,466 iTrader: 0 / 0% Latest Blog: None	Backlinks - quality, not quantity For a while I thought that signature links were an easy way to build up PR and - especially - get good anchor text to help page rankings. However, after a few months experimentation, signature links are pretty worthless as backlinks. Not only are the links usually poorly weighted, so that PR transfer is extremely limited - but, also, Google does not appeart to care for the number of backlinks from any site, as much as the number of different sites being linked from. Not only that, Google seems to be clustering themes - ie, for your backlinks to be of any real worth, then your backlinks must be from other sites covering the same or similar topics. Although signature links are a good way to form anchor text, without being applied in content then as site backlinks they will have almost no effect in terms of either their number or PR movement. Signature links still remain an important way to direct human traffic to a sites. However, they are, in effect, almost worthless for Google rankings. Google insists that quality, not quantity, is more important.