How to Get Blog Traffic From Yahoo Answers

Ritesh Warke

             Yahoo Answers is a bustling question and answers community. Members may pose questions or answer questions asked by other members. It is a popular and successful platform. It has survived the challenges posed by other such communities, particularly Google Answers! Here, in this concise article, I will share with you some effective tips that will help you get blog traffic from Yahoo Answers.

               Just focusing on organic traffic would be foolishness. That is because SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategies changes from time to time. The factors helping you to rank high now may take a beating in the next algorithm update! Just take a look at the blogs, which suffered huge traffic loss post Google’s algorithm updates in the recent times. Thus, it makes sense to focus some effort towards building up sources of referral traffic. When talking about referral traffic, the first thing that comes to our mind is- Social Networking sites. This is followed by other sources namely- social bookmarking, forums, communities etc.
               Yahoo Answers, as a source of referral traffic, is often overlooked even by the smartest of bloggers. According to me, with the right strategies, it can be mould into a source of consistent referral traffic. Before learning how to get referral traffic using it, let


Out of the many advantages, the following are the key ones-

#1 More sales, conversions

               If your blog is all about selling/marketing products, then the extra traffic can very much be converted into extra sales! You see, Yahoo Answers is a PR7 site, which is trusted by many! So, a link to your blog from it carries some ‘weight’!

#2 Increased reputation and exposure

              Well, this is an advantage of sharing links on Yahoo Answers. Basically, it is a ‘problem solving’ site. Thus, any link you quote or share there is aimed at solving problems. Thus, with the number of problems you solve, your reputation rises! Ultimately, this is good for your blog too! Along with this comes added exposure, which is also crucial to a blog’s success!

#3 You’ll get repeating visitors

              Yes, this is an interesting prospect. A visitor who comes back to your blog for more, later, is a valuable asset. With Yahoo Answers, you’ll get just that. When people see that your blog is good at ‘solving problems’ and for getting solutions, it is more likely that people will bookmark it or visit it again on a consistent basis. Interesting prospect, isn’t it? Now that we’ve ran through the list of different advantages, let’s now get to know the methods of getting traffic. Here are some effective strategies that you should try out-Getting traffic to blog from Yahoo Answers

              Before we start, it is a must that you should have a Yahoo id. You may log in there using your Facebook id also and complete your profile later.

After that, follow the tips listed below-

#1 Become a level 2 member

              Yahoo Answers works on ‘points’ system. When you answer a question, you are awarded 2 points for your efforts. While signing up, you are provided with 100 points. New member belong to ‘Level 1’. Upon answering questions and accumulating points, a member is promoted to ‘Level 2’. To become a level 2 member, one should amass 250 points. An easy way to get to this level is by leaving really good answers. Because, if your answer gets elected as the ‘Best Answer’ by the poser, you’ll be awarded 10 points extra! Thus, this makes journey to achieve 250 points much easier! But why reaching level 2 is a must, you might ask. This is because, if you want to leave a ‘clickable’ link to your blog, along with the answer, then being level 2 member is mandatory. Basically, getting traffic using Yahoo Answers is by leaving/quoting links of your blog posts along with answer to the relevant questions. Now, in case of a level 1 member, the url left wouldn’t be clickable. And people these days are too busy to copy and paste the url to the address bar of their browser to get a glimpse of your blog!

               But, in case of a level 2 member, the url left is clickable. This highly increases the chances of it getting clicked. The more the clicks, the more the number of visitors! Thus, becoming a level 2 member is of utmost importance.

#2 Finding the ‘hottest’ and ‘most sought’ questions to answer

               This is the most crucial part. Getting consistent traffic from Yahoo Answers will only be possible if you satisfy this aspect. You must find a question that lots of people ‘will search’ in the future. You must try to answer and leave your blog’s links on answers to such questions. And yeah, finding such questions is not easy. But, to an extent, you can zero in on such questions by scavenging through the tons of questions being asked across various categories on Yahoo Answers. Make it a point to look out and make use of such questions. Because, only then will more and more people see and click on your blog’s url. And while answering such questions, remember to write the ‘best’ answer possible! Also, you must make it sure that your blog has an awesome post related to the question posed. Only then will leaving the url along with the answer make sense!

#3 Do self promotion in limit

               The moderators at Yahoo Answers are pretty efficient! They are good at scanning through large number of answers and filtering out spam and self promoting stuff. Make sure that you don’t just focus on promoting your own stuff. In fact, when you start out, you should promote more links from other reputed sources, like- Wikipedia links, links from influential sites and blogs etc. Also, try to maintain a healthy ‘ratio’ of self promotion to promotion of others’ links. Like for every link of your own blog you share, share 3 links from other sources along with your answers! This way, you’ll manage to stay safe from the radar of the moderators. If moderators find that you are violating their community guidelines and remove your answer, 10 points will get deduced from your account! So, never go full throttle when it comes to promoting your blog’s posts along with answers!

#4 Take help of friends

                If you’ve got help, tasks become easier! Ask your large hearted friends to lend their support in your crusade! Ask them to use the site and reach level 2. If they are lazy, like me, to type answers and accumulate 250 points, you may ask them to just give their ids to you so that you may answer questions using them. And if things sway your way and you manage to get multiple ids belonging to level 2, you are in luck! You may promote your blog’s links better using those ids also, keeping points #2 and #3 in mind, without forgetting to implement them!Further, you may also ask your friends to ‘pose’ ‘much sought’ questions and you may answer them. But hey, this is an ‘unethical’ method and needs to be performed with much precaution! I usually don’t recommend this method, but I’ve seen folks doing this and getting good exposure in the process.

#5 ‘Forcing’ people to quote your blog posts in their answers

                 This is an exciting and rewarding prospect. Let me give you an example. In an education related blog of mine, I created an article describing various good courses in India to study. I made a concise list. It ranked well in search results and got read by many. Slowly, people using Yahoo Answers started using the link to that article while they answered relevant questions. Usually, they’d list a few courses and give the link and state- ‘You’ll find the whole list here’. And I still get visitors from those very links! All this happened without me putting in any conscious effort! Literally, the quality of the article ‘forced’ people to use it in their answers! You may also do this feat, be it any niche that you are blogging about!

Conclusion

                  These are the strategies that I’ve always depended on, to get traffic from Yahoo Answers. The main strategy should be to work steadily, without being too aggressive in self promotion. Also, finding the ‘hottest’ question also is necessary. Hope you’ll implement the tips and get good results. Share this post and express your opinion in the comment section.