LyteByte

The hot selling topic in the blogosphere is how to get good traffic to blogs and how to retain them or covert them as regular readers. The popular ones around are Digg, Stumbleupon, Technorati, MyBlogLog, Search Engine, Forums, Directories, Link Exchange and other community centered sites. But the one that is overlooked and never talked about is Yahoo! Answers.

To give an overview of what Yahoo Answer is, Yahoo answers allows users to ask doubts and questions, it also allows users to answer them and the best answer is chosen by multiple votes. You can answer questions with the link to your sites to gain traffic from Yahoo Answer.

What to do to get traffic from Yahoo! Answers?

1) Find a Category

Yahoo Answer is categorized, so look for the category which is relevant to your blog’s theme. If you take Lyte Byte for example, it’s related to Computers and Internet. There are so many categories, so obviously you blog will fit into one. Each category also has many subcategories but these are closely related. To have a huge margin, stick to the main category.

2) Get More Knowledge

Since you are blogging in a particular theme or subject, you must be having a fair idea about the subject even if you are not specialized. Try to read more about your subject and get more knowledge. You can do this in Yahoo answer itself. Read both the questions and answers in your category, so you will know what the nature of question you can expect there is.

3) Answer with a Link

Look out for questions which you can answer and give a link back to your site for more detail. When you answer, don’t just give a link, answer it in brief but you should convince the reader that by clicking the link he would get more detailed answer. Also giving just a link would look more like a spam and the reader would not trust it. But don’t forget to give the link to your site in the source section. When you give the link, give it to the related post and not to the main page. If the reader gets the answer, he is sure to probe around to see what is this site anyway?

4) Be the First One to Answer

When you answer a particular question, try to make it as the first one to answer. If others answer to that question, it will be added to the bottom of what you have written. So if you write your answer somewhere in the middle, your effort may be lost in between.

5) Give the Best Answer

The whole point is to provide the best answer. After the time allotted for each question to be answered, all the answers is set for voting. If your answer is being selected as the best, then your content will make it to the top of all the answers. This will make sure to get a continued traffic from that question. Many people before posting a question, they search if a particular question is already been asked and they are more likely to read the best answer than the other answers.

6) Be a Top Contributor

Yahoo Answers also gives points for your answers. 2 points for an answer, 10 points for the best answer and 1 point for voting an answer. As your points grow you become the top contributor. When you answer a particular question, you will be shown as a top contributor near your avatar. By this people may trust your words more than others and they are more likely to click your avatar and see what other questions you have answered. This means more traffic to your site.

7) Workaround a little bit

If you don’t find any questions that you can answer and link to your killer post, then work around a little bit. You write a post in your site, ask your friend to post a question on this, you answer with the link and ask your friend to vote as the best answer. You can also work around a little bit if you have multiple yahoo ids. But note that if others feel suspicious that you are abusing the system they can mark it so and the vote is also multiple voter based, so try to look genuine and not a spam.

8 ) Lead Generation

Apart from the traffic you get, Yahoo Answer also gives lead generation. If you have ever wondered what to write about in your site, you will never run out of ideas now. As you are browsing to answer questions, you will come across some questions that will interest and you would like to post it in your site. Answer the question in your site and give the link to that post as answer in Yahoo. These are questions asked by a genuine person and there are many people with the similar question, so when you post it in your site there are chances you will receive hits for that post from search engine as well.

9) Star It

If you want to keep track of all the questions that gives you an idea to post it in your blog, Star them to keep track.

10) Location based Traffic

If you are looking for a particular geography based traffic, then consider answering questions from Yahoo Answers International. They have many country specific Yahoo Answer sites and they may be more relevant to you if your site is localized.

So, is it worth the time?

All these things may look as if it takes lot of time. But if you look at from the other angle it’s all beneficial. We read lots of feeds to keep us updated with the latest news and development. Following with these questions in Yahoo not only gives the idea of what is the hot topic but also gives an idea of what people are asking about it. This will make your posts to improve in quality and these maybe the exact keywords people maybe using in search engines to find answer. Moreover it’s a continued traffic, as people will be definitely reading these answered questions even after a long time since the question is being asked.

You can also try out and use these similar kind of sites where you answer questions.
# answerbag.com
# askville.amazon.com
# yedda.com

Note and Disclaimer: I am not sure if any of the tips mentioned here violate any TOS of Yahoo Answers. Don’t Spam and Do it as per your discretion.

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