Advanced LMH signature link advice from a passing guru?

[Mountain Goat]

On LMH is it true to say:

1) www button link on one's post improves SEO?

2) Something like

www.bestholidayrentals.com/antigua1938.htm

in the sig. would improve SEO even more?

3) Luxury Antigua Beach House with a link underneath would improve SEO even better?

(3) isn't difficult to do, I know, but I didn't want to give dud advice to someone who doesn't do this.

MG
(no, I'm not lobbying for the Caribbean section)

[la vache!]

I thought that was why everyone had been including their link in the signature recently! I put mine under the words most used on searches as I thought SE liked that. But Marcus knows far more than me and he haasn't done that on his signature, so perhaps I'm wrong!

[Mountain Goat]

Certainly works for you, Susan - you're #2 for those keywords on Google!

MG

[la vache!]

I'm not sure how much the LMH signature helps as my site is so old and has (more by luck than SEO expertise) been there for ages on Google. But I don't think the signature can do any harm! The gurus will advise hopefully (I'm definitely not in this category).

[Paul Carmel]

And there was me thinking a LMH signature was for fun, and not just for Xmas.

[paolo]

MG,

I think you are correct in all you say. Certainly your website in your signature will be picked up by Google as an inbound link. I cannot say for sure about the text in the link improving the value of the link, but that is usually how it works.

[oskar]

Anchor text in a link is very important. It will help with your position in serps for that phrase far more than a URL.

[Topcat]

Errrrrrrrrrrrr???

Anchor text? Que es, por favor.

I've not come across that term before, not really being very technical.

Regards,

Pauline

[reddevil]

Google (and most other search engines) are highly sophisticated and can determine if a link is part of a forum.

It certainly would not do any harm to have a link there but it probably does very little to improve your search engine position. Otherwise, wouldn't webmasters join lots of forums and then link to their own sites? Whehey, then there wouldn't be any need to do all that hard work in finding suitable links. Unfortunately, it isn't that easy anymore.

[Mountain Goat]

Pauline
I would take a stab guess that anchor text covers the actual link. So in Oskar's post, LANZAROTE VILLAS is the anchor text, and the underlying url (link) is found by hovering over LANZAROTE VILLAS.

Reddevil
Otherwise, wouldn't webmasters join lots of forums and then link to their own sites?
I would have thought you've hit the nail on the head there, but it's not just webmasters. There are dozens of posters with 4-5000+ posts to their name on some forums (not on LMH of course, we're well behaved), and call me a cynic, judging by the quality of their posts (in some cases of dubious usefulness to anyone) one has to suspect they believe they're increasing their SEO rather than endowing their forum with a greater knowledge.

Not implying their hyperactive posting isn't hard work....just curious to know whether they reap the rewards.

Just had a reply on a SEO forum:

Generally, once your site has one link from a domain, that's about all it needs. After that, the engines start discounting the value of hundreds or thousands of links from the one domain.

It might be a posting forum, with thousands of topics, but it's still just one domain after all.

MG

[Topcat]

I don't get anything by hovering over anything. Not in Firefox, anyway.
Pauline

[Mountain Goat]

Pauline

OK, badly explained; hover over Anchor Text on the post, and at bottom left of your page frame, the target url should appear - same in most flavours of browser I think. In fact, the same as hovering over any potential link on the post - WWW button, Profile button etc. (hope you're using a PC).

MG

[Topcat]

Oooooooohhhh! Yes, it does! I was expecting it to appear under my hover, that's why I didn't see it. Thanks

Pauline

[paolo]

If you check for a link from here to a poster's site, you should see only one on Google, regardless of the number of posts with that link.

[marcus]

OK I'd love to comment on some of the above but first things first.
How do I get the signature to have my chosen words. I've tried every combination in the profile including typing the html in, putting the phrase before and after the website link and nothing seems to work

HELP!!!