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Hmm, now this is why I don't put too much effort into measuring the numbers of incoming links. The ones that are counted in some places, aren't counted in others, and the numbers skew the value as people think in terms of quantity rather than quality... then there's the fact that they jump up and down like Madonna's pants anyway. I tried a whole bunch of different ways before concluding we don't yet seem to be of an age where we can track them, at least not to any level of reliability or significance for taking actions on them.

Stephen has hit the nail on the head. In order to take advantage of a site's DA, you have to build up the PA and you do that by building links to it. The beauty of it is that you only need a handful of links, then the PA really soars.

They don't use nofollow, so this would be all regular links. If we have a huge partnership, we would suddenly have links from more than 70 sites all using the same anchortext.

Yeh, linkjuice I'd say is worthless. However I'd still do them regardless of the low / no linkjuice, its just links to the site and you'll get picked up on yahoo and bing. still, and I'm sure Google will notice them and count it as something even if its only a very small amount of juice, its better than nothing.

I was afraid I needed  dedicated ips, had that before then switched, we switch back. It may be impossible to have separate names and addresses, can you let let know what source I can go to to get the latest on this. Things are too critical to risk based on any opinion, including mine. Thanks for responding again.

I know that Google rarely updates toolbar PR You understand this.  It is an important consideration. I suppose the site could have also earned a lot of quality links since the last update. If you thought that one email message would get you a PR0 link on loc.gov you would not want to pass it up - even if that page had zero outside links?

I think most of the responses addressed the question as if it concerned signatures on the SEOmoz forums. I believe Daniel was asking about signatures on forums in general. I can share two observations regarding links in signatures: some sites disable the links completely. If that is the case, you will know right away and there is your answer. some sites allow the link, but add a "no follow" tag. It depends on the site preference and the software they use. You can always view the page source code and see if the no follow tag has been added, then you will know the answer for that site. The topic is a double-edged sword. You want quality contributors to receive credit for their work. Then again, by allowing these links you will attract some poor quality responses.

I think the link from randomsite.com (PR6 homepage) is more valuable than a link from evenmorerandom.com. Because there toolbar PageRanks are updated at an almost random basis, it is quite possible that randomsite.com inner pages actually have a decent PageRank internally at Google, that is simply not showing up in the toolbar yet. While the same holds true for evenmorerandom.com, there is a slim chance that this page has gone from PR/ to PR6. Comparing the MozRank of these inner pages (which is updated far more frequently) would be far more useful in this situation.

Short answer, No. The best detailed answer is offered by Matt Cutts in this 2 minute video from Google: http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp#p/u/25/l6g5hoBYlf0 Just be conscious of all your links. Use the SEOmoz toolbar's Analyze button and check the Page Attributes. You may be surprised at how many links your page actually offers.

I like your answer

If its the improvement of user experience - then the addition of relevant links is worth doing definitely, with respect to changing the content itself, I would be inclined to only make very minor edits and not disturb any of the long tail phrases you are ranking for.

This can't be answered in a reply like this... Sorry, but you should check your website with a nice little Google Tool: http://pagespeed.googlelabs.com/ And take advantage of the Google webmaster tools under http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Thank you for the prompt and comprehensive reply! The /online/en/home is structure created by our web content management system. We have a consultant for our CMS coming in next month, so I'll definitely see if this is something we can address.

True. And it IS fun watching the 90% out there with their fishing gear, their custom fishing trawlers, all set to catch fish, then throwing nets into the water where the holes in those nets are bigger than almost all the fish in the ocean

I completely agree and yes this is just my opinion however I am concerned that for example .gov sites etc are the exception and not the rule. I think if you were deciding wether to have a link from a .gov or .edu site then yes it would be beneficial however if it is just a 'trustworthy' domain the impact would depend on far more factors (topical) than simply the trust that the domain holds.

If you are relevant in multiple categories I see no harm in trying to get links from all of them, it's quick and easy to submit your site. The category structure in Dmoz isn't perfect so it can be difficult to know which is the most relevant category for your site especially with some being so similar.

Traditional online directories are losing its value in the eyes of search engines and a good example is DMOZ. Even though DMOZ was one of the most popular directory before 2009 (it still has some value) it is not the best link source. Local search prominence has allowed local directories to become stronger than a regular web link directory. The question a user should ask before investing in directory link building is are users going to appreciate the availability of this directory? Is this going to provide benefits to the end user? Is this a vertical directory within high authority website or is this just a collection of links? Is the directory locally targeted (think yellowpages.com , cityguide.com) (applies to local ranking) If the answer to these questions is no then clearly this is not a good source for getting links.

I selectively use nofollows to social media profiles. In some circumstances, I want to build some authority to my social media profiles. However, I don't want to haemorrhage PR by creating 5 outbound links every time I create a post. However, I also follow the WWMD mantra (what would moz do) and they follow links to their profiles...