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.
Update: If you like this post, please digg it!
Nice post Mr Byte.
Very very nice post and very much informative
JC, great post. Many people may have overlooked Yahoo Answers, but the fact is … it beat out Google
Great tips, buddy
Digged it
But Yahoo! Answers is seriously addictive. I ve spent hours n hours in the site earlier
Very useful information, Digged it and I’m gonna try it.
Never even thought of that. Very nice.
Usually, I spend around 2 hours a day on Social Sites like Digg and StumbleUpon. Maybe, I use it spend it on Yahoo Answers.
Thanks!
Good post! I’ve also received traffic from Yahoo Answers. It’s worthwhile and you get continuous traffic for a long period of time.
Dugg the post as well.
Hi Joel,
About your point no.3 Answer with a link. I assume you mean with a link to your blog right? If you read Yahoo Answers TOS carefully they actually disallow linking back to your own site. I did it couple of times and got the link deleted. I was at level 2 at that time, but have not visited Yahoo Answers ever since. I thought it was a waste of time.
I’m discouraging anyone from trying. Those guy at Yahoo Answers just don’t have the time to scan every answers written by its users - so wish you luck and hope they didn’t detect what you do.
Great tip! I dugg it and posted a link to it here on HelpThing, too:
http://helpthing.com/story.php?title=10-Steps-to-get-Traffic-from-Yahoo-Answers
I hadn’t really thought of Answers that way, but, sure, makes a lot of sense.
I Digg, I just Dugg, I have Dugged. Great post Mr. Byte, pleased to make your acquaintance.
-Scott
Hi Calvin, I am not aware of it but till now nothing has happened to me like that…maybe that’s because I don’t post every answer with a link to my site. Whichever answer I know, I make an entry there but only where I find it relevant to link, I give a link back…
I am experimenting only recently, probably I have to wait a little longer to see the outcome.
Thanks for tip. But what about Calvin says Yahoo don’t allow linking back to your blog? Let me try. By the way thank to Thilak for Pingback.I am here because of him.
Very useful info. Digged it
I never tried it before. will try it.
I heard that, if done right, its one of the effective mode of getting traffic. The best part is, you don’t have to wait for Google to send traffic all the time.
Great tips. I have been on Answers for sometime, but never thought to link something I’ve written as a source. I answered a question today about quitting smoking, by giving a synopsis of my post on how I did it, with a link back to the post I made.
As far as Yahoo! allowing this? Well the YPN Blog linked you in a post, so I think they are pretty much OK with what you’ve said here.
Indeed a very good way of creating awareness about any site within related category and appropriate answer content.
Keep up the Good Work
You can also refer to your website or blog by name, if it is unique, which may prompt a reader to search it out via a Google search to find out more…
i.e. say “I just a post on ‘The Cattle Call blog’ that answers that very question! Basically they stated a cow with 7 udders is a sign of the Apocalypse, and then offered 3 tips that could save your soul…”
That sort of thing may prompt someone to do a Google search for “the cattle call blog” to find your post.
A post like that won’t give you an inbound link to your site, but could deliver targeted traffic. And there might be ranking benefits from Google if/when someone actively searches for a site in Google’s search bar/engine… dunno if that’s true, but may be.
Just one way around blatantly adding a link to your Yahoo answers that could make it through the censors.
@steve gerard, That’s a good point too… Thanks for mentioning
Heh nice idea to drive traffic out of some where.
But i guess the number of people using answers is lesser than search engines,
These questions are very specific i must say to write a post out of it.
I am wondering if this is possible.
i will try it
Nice tip… amazing…a creative mind… never thought about it that way… well I always see that some of the answers on it were lame… i never thought that we could use it to our advantage. thanks for the info.
gr8 post, thnx alot!
I had played with Answers a bit and it did bring in some traffic. I linked to both my own sites and those of others. I would suspect if you mixed up the links in your answers like that you would be less apt to get noticed and flagged as spammy.
Thanks for the reminded to go and work on this again.
Hi,
Yeah, it can really increase your traffic. But it takes more time than social bookmarking…
- William
Thanks for sharing the tip, will try implementing on my blog. Good day !
A very useful information. I have backlinks already in this site.
Really nice way… I never thought of using it this way…
great brains u’ve got !!!
Thanks a bunch for sharing tips like this…
Thanks for the info, going to try it out now
Ok, tried it, reporting back.
Not many (open) questions in my niche, but found one and answered it with a link to an appropriate page on my website. Will have to make this a regular activity.
Quick tip - When you get to Yahoo Answers, you have to trawl through a lot of questions that are closed. You can find open questions by going directly to: http://www.yquestions.com/
Well just tell me how much traffic one can imagine with yahoo answers. I have heard a lot of things about yahoo answers and have seen proofs of traffic from it. But doing this manually …isnt it too tiring??
I mean there are plugins and softwares which let you do it.
Anyways good post…..
Really nice thorough information about yahoo answers. Thanks
Recently i realized the power of yahoo answers. Now i found this info while searching. It helps a lot..
Thanks for this good advice on traffic.
Very good article.
I tried this method but i got banned. so be careful how to reply with a link… don’t answer all your answers with a link of your website.