nofollow forum signature links - good or bad?

[Mr Lucky]

I vaguely remember reading years ago that forum signature links can appear to be spammy to Google. I am a member of a forum that automatically adds nofollow to post links, but not to signature links. having links in my signature would be useful there in regard to members of the forum finding my site and products, but I am afraid that the linked pages (or even the entire site) might be penalised.

I am aware that they links will have little value for SEO, just wanted to check whether they could cause any penalties.

I know that the owners of the site are not bothered enough to change this, so I just wondered if anyone knows or can point to any recent info about Google attitude to forum signature links.

 

[Community]

My personal view on this is it would depend on the forum, its relation to your site and how many posts you have.

But from a penalisation point of view, if they are related to your subject matter I doubt they would cause a problem. Google's algorithm is clever enough now to discount any links it doesnt want to count.

If anything, they could be adding a little bit of diversity to your profile if all your backlinks are from authoritative, high quality sites.

Overall, I wouldnt be overly concerned. Although rule of thumb to be ultra safe is to make sure you are using branded anchor or URL anchors rather than keywords.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense.

Overall, I wouldnt be overly concerned. Although rule of thumb to be ultra safe is to make sure you are using branded anchor or URL anchors rather than keywords.

So a branded anchor would just be the specific name of the product as opposed to keywords. I suppose it is being honest and saying exactly where the link goes instead of trying to lure people ,in with key words that may mislead them into thinking the links is to an article or something specific to those keywords???