Signature links - do you allow them?

[Jon12345]

I notice some members of my board have 7 links to their website in the signature. Does this adversely affect your SEO? Do you allow signature links?

 

[Mr Lucky]

I notice some members of my board have 7 links to their website in the signature. Does this adversely affect your SEO? Do you allow signature links?

I don't think it does these days, however it can look spammy.

I do encourage people to link back to us if they use a link - however it's best if it seems like an organic useful link rather than a pure link farmy reciprocal link.

I'm not totally sure how to always do that that but as I have two associated sites I ask them to link back to the other one so it doesn't just look like a link swap.

 

[djbaxter]

@Mr Lucky, to clarify the OP is talking about signature links, not links in posts.

@Jon12345 7 signature links is excessive. They are nofollow by default but that's still excessive.

It's not only ugly but it can have an effect directly and indirectly on your SEO in two ways:

• Although PageRank is no longer a top ranking factor for Google, the value of a link from any page on your site that may be passed to another of your pages or an external page is a function of the total number of outgoing links on the originating page. If your members are routinely using large numbers of signature links, that would negatively impact the value of any dofollow links to a page you want to reward.
• Googlebot still follows links which are nofollow so an unnecessarily high number of sig links can affect your crawl budget,
• If you think it's important to allow your members to have that many sig links, at least hide them from non-logged in visitors like search engine spiders.

It can also encourage spammers.

On the forums I manage, most members are permitted only a single sig link. Certain trusted members, premium members, and staff are allowed more to a maximum of 3 or 4. I cannot imagine why any legitimate member would need more than that.

 

[Mr Lucky]

@Mr Lucky, to clarify the OP is talking about signature links, not links in posts.

Yes I know. Which is obviously a lot easier to spot and police than links scattered about in posts