Forum posting in order to raise PageRank

[wolf8769]

Hi all! This thread is related to the activity of being active in forums in an effort to raise PageRank. Let's stay focused on that, eh? :)

The point is to get more relevant links to your website. If you visit http://www.shinysolutions.com, you will notice that this is not much of a website. In fact, it would be a misnomer to call this a "site". It is a "page"! This domain has barely existed for 3 months. It is a website that belongs to my associate and I. If you have the Google Toolbar, you will notice that we have PageRank of 3 (at this time). It was 4/10 a week ago. This is almost entirely from posts I have made at http://www.codetoad.com/forum. I am a Site Expert at CodeToad, and therefore, post a lot of answers to people's coding problems. Go to http://www.google.com and search for:

link:www.shinysolutions.com

You will see all the CodeToad links back to my website. This clearly demonstrates the power of frequent posting of relevant content in
relevant forums.

However, this is only true if the forums themselves are indexed and have at least some PageRank with Google. Notice that when you go to http://www.codetoad.com/forum that not only is the main forum index ranked, but if you drill down to each individual thread, each one is ranked. As I search for forums to be a part of, I'm aware of whether the individual threads have any PageRank. If not, it is unlikely that my post will help me earn link points.

I'm not suggesting that the only reason to be active in a forum is for the link value! But I do consider this. If I find two forums that appear to be of similar content and community quality, but one is indexed and ranked by Google, that's my forum!

Now, I notice that the forums here are not individually ranked. The forum index has PageRank, but none of the threads I've viewed randomly have PageRank. Any ideas as to why? I see this in a LOT of forums. I notice that in some forums, the page title does not change from the index to the threads. This could be part of the issue--that Google does not give pages with identical titles much or any PageRank?

Please, don't anyone flame me for anything incorrect I may have written....instead, please post the correction and explanation for all of us to benefit from. Thanks!

Internet Applications .:. Database Programming

[Leigh]

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[I, Brian]

People like John Scott and myself have both long noticed the advantages of forums and signature backlinks.

However, I'm personally moving to the opinion that they serve a very limited usefulness.

As forums tend to be link rich - not just other sigs, but also all the buttons, link tree, and other such, means that PR transfer will be very small.

Add to that the fact that most forum threads are going to be low PR anyway.

And then factor in that most threads are not necessarily going to be "on topic" - if Google is able to distinguish that to any degree.

In simple terms, forum signature links are a nice perk. But there are not to be relied upon for any significant PR transfer. Anchor text can be a particularly useful issue, but if you check out the Florida thread by Phil C, you'll see a particular common conjecture among the SEO community is that this is one aspect of a number of features that may well have been factored down by Google. The drop in your site PR from 4 to 3 is a strong suggestion of that.

So sig links are nice, but don't put too much expectation on them.