Website Traffic Tips: Yahoo Answers
January 27, 2011 by Jeff Klein
Filed under Internet Marketing
Yahoo Answers is a great place to generate traffic to your sites, because no matter what niche or topic your website is about, there are probably people asking questions about it. If you can answer them effectively, it will help you get both direct traffic and long-term backlinks to your website. Let’s look at how to use it effectively.
The first thing to keep in mind is that you need to be able to provide some value. It’s a give-and-take situation – you’re giving useful information and in turn you’re “taking” traffic and backlinks.
If you approach it from a purely selfish point of view, it’s not going to work as well, and chances are your Yahoo Answers account will get suspended sooner or later (probably sooner!)
That means that you’re not going to include a link to your website in every single answer you post. You might include a link to other sites in some answers, or no link at all in others. You want your account to grow naturally. In other words, if someone from Yahoo was to review your answers, you don’t want every single one of them pointing back to your own website.
The most effective way to use Yahoo Answers is to spend some time on it every day. Search for questions in your market and find some that you can answer. Ideally, find the newest ones so you can be the first, or close to the first person to respond. The higher you are in the list of responses, the more traffic you’re going to get.
And ultimately, you want to have as many of your answers as possible chosen as the “best answer” because it will be shown right underneath the question from that point on.
When you answer a question today, if it’s chosen as the best one, it could generate traffic to your site for years to come.
When you answer a question, there’s a spot where you can enter a link to a website that provides more information about it. That is where you can include a link to your own site in some of the answers – not in the answer itself.
One good way to approach this is when you find a relevant question that you don’t already cover on your site, write a new blog post or article explaining the answer in some detail. Then provide a shorter summary on Yahoo Answers with a link to your new article.
This kills two birds with one stone – coming up with ideas for new content on your site and answering questions on Yahoo.
Thanks for the interesting article. I just started my website and have been trying to learn how to increase traffic…I will try the Yahoo Answers that you mentioned in your blog.
Thanks for your comment Bob. I’m glad you like the article. Best of luck with your internet marketing efforts.
Thanks for the tips Jeff, but I still had no success with yahoo answers. I mean, I spent over 50 hours there and I just got a few visits.. it doesn’t worth at all… or am I doing something wrong?
i’ve got pretty good results with yahoo answers. I managed to drive some real targeted traffic to my site and the conversion rate is quite high. I guess it’s because the traffic is more targeted than other sources. also linkedin is a good source of traffic, recently
I’ve never actually used Yahoo answers, so I’m going to give it a go. Thanks for the tip – it should have been obvious really seeing how often yahoo answers come up in Google SERPS. I guess the main thing is making sure that you give a good answer. I guess the thing to do is trawl the questions for ones that you can answer well.
you are correct Yahoo Answers is a great way to get some traffic to your website. Sometimes its not the traffic you want. We are a website design company that specializes in Web Design for Doctors Only. Come check out our site when you get a chance. Thanks
I’ve never tried using Yahoo Answers before. But I guess I’m gonna give it a shot now. Thanks for sharing!
hi,
good post. I like your post.
Yahoo answers is great once i was able to paste hyper links back to my site I jumped up the serps like no tomorrow i highly recommend.
It’s a good idea in theory, but how effective is it in reality? Does it have any kind of impact SEO wise, also?
Thanks Ross. I thinks this helps from the standpoint of “social proof” or authority. Google, and other search engines, are increasingly incorporating social indicators into their rankings.
It’s a technique I’ve heard about before. However I can imagine it can be quite time consuming, but I guess if you do it well you can get some really targeted traffic from it. It just goes to show how things are shifting from the ‘traditional’ traffic methods to newer methods, e.g. social media, bookmarking, Q & A sites etc. Definitely something for people to consider as part of their on going online marketing campaign anyway!