Do you make member profiles on sites that have public member profile listings?

[adriandg]

Or do you find that this takes more time than it is worth?  I mean there are literally thousands of websites that allow you to signup and create a public profile and drop your link in there.  But is this really worth the efforts?

Would like to hear from some people on both sides of the argument, as i am sure there are people who do this, and also people who don't on here.

[EGOL]

I don't do it.

Many of these links are nofollowed.

Many of them that are followed have very few (if any) links into them if you are not an active participant in the site, making posts and comments.

I believe that search engines can recognize these types of links if they want to and a backlink profile filled with them would look like a desperate manipulation attempt instead of a worthwhile site.

I think that my time is better spent on content.  One genuine link into an article would be worth a ton of profile links on the rear ends of forums.

[adriandg]

What about sites other than forums? like what about our links here on our SEOMoz profiles?

[MarieHaynes]

My general rule of thumb is that if I can create a link quite easily myself then it's likely not going to be valuable.

So, if I can easily sign up for a profile on a site and create a link back to my site quickly it's likely not going to be that helpful.

With that being said, if I genuinely want to be a member of that website then I'll definitely set up a profile and take advantage of the link back.  It's not going to hurt!  But I wouldn't put in special effort to create profiles on sites that I really don't care about.

[adriandg]

then why do other SEOers do it so much? it must work if people do it this much, look at any of these for example.  You will find literally thousands of fake profiles on each, and this is just a tiny microscopic subsection of what is out there.

http://cartthrob.com/forums/member_profile/memberlist
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/forums/observer/memberlist
http://ee.twitchfilm.net/site/forums/member/memberlist
http://www.crossfitbrandx.com/index.php/forums/member/memberlist
http://www.andrewjohnstonmusic.com/forum/member/memberlist
http://www.miniaturewargaming.com/index.php/forums/gamers/memberlist
http://www.trakax.com/software/forum/member/memberlist
http://www.realmacsoftware.com/forums/index.php/forums/member/memberlist
http://www.asbcla.org/forums/member/memberlist
http://www.cbi.com/member/memberlist

[EGOL]

then why do other SEOers do it so much?

Just sayin my philosophy... You don't have to agree... and I hope that most people don't agree. 

You will not defeat a competitor by mimicing his strategies.  You defeat them by doing something more effective.  Keep in mind, there are only ten positions on the first page of Google for any given keyword and EVERYONE ELSE ranks lower.