Do industry Forums really help build links?

[teachcsg]

I've read that one way to build some links to your site is to contribute to a industry specific forum that is popular and pretty active. I've started doing this for about 2 months now. This particular forum allows your signature to include your websites name. When I look for links with the Seomoz tools and the new Bing tools I never see this forum appear(showing links to my site). So my question is should I continue to answer questions on this forum or is it a waste of time? And does this usually take a long time i.e lie years? Thanks, Cesar

[BenFox]

Then real benefit of contributing to an industry forum is that it allows you to build authority within that industry and to connect with other webmasters. You can then leverage the relationships with those other webmasters at a later date.

The actual benefit of having a signature link is negligible.

[PASSLtd]

I'd like to say, and although most links from forums are no follow, they still help.

They can also drive good traffic, if you have an e-com site or goals its worth checking for referring sites that lead to or assist conversion.

Take a look at your competitors link profile to see if its something they have that you don't for a quick answer.

To answer the overall question, yes they help with link building from a different stand point.

You can use the forum posts to understand the theme of questions your target market has and produce good quality content from that. Your then producing content people want to share.

Networking is a base ingredient for good link building. As Mr Fox states.

You may often stumble across a post months old with a questions unanswered. These are content goldmines, love them and use them.

Maybe stop thinking about how you can get links and start thinking about giving people content they want, need or would like to share.