What is meant by Profile Linking in SEO?
Profile linking is one of the offpage backlink creation techniques in which you add your website’s URL to your personal, professional, & business profiles created on various websites.
For example, you created an account on Facebook, Twitter, & Linkedin and all of these platforms allow you to place a link to your project or website in your profile. SEO profile linking is creating many such profiles on different platforms and adding your website URL’s under bio.
What is meant by Backlink Creation in SEO?
Google uses algorithms for judging the quality of a website and those algorithms use internal and external links pointing to your website as one of the 200 ranking factors. So, when you get organic (natural without manual intervention) links from several authority websites, it is considered good by Google. So, the SEO experts try to implement strategies that help in acquiring backlinks from different sources.
How valuable is Profile Linking for generating backlinks for SEO?
Well, the truth is that if you are a valued member of a forum or website and contribute regularly that increases the value of the online community then placing your website link in your profile is beneficial. As people might find that link useful and so does Google.
Although, if you are creating hundreds of profiles and just inserting links in them for the sake of backlink creation without contributing anything useful then it is considered blackhat and spammy by Google. Doing this is an utter waste of time and you will not benefit from this strategy in the long term.
It’s like Give & Take. Contribute to the platform and you will get benefits in return.
Does Forum Profile Signature/links count as backlinks?
Forum and profile signature links do count if they are dofollow and if you contribute useful stuff to that forum otherwise those are just useless links that are not considered by Google when ranking your website.
Are Profile Links still effective?
As I said earlier that profile links are only effective if you maintain quality and avoid spam. A tactfully placed profile link at an online platform where you are a valued member will be considered a good backlink in the eyes of Google.
So, to conclude Profile Linking in SEO means to create backlinks by placing your website URL’s on profiles created on different online platforms like Quora, Slideshare, Reddit, Twitter, Forums, etc.