Yahoo Answers is a source of very targeted traffic that many marketers overlook. The time involved with it and the ease with which it appears Yahoo ban people puts them off.
The basic premise of Yahoo Answers is that people ask questions and other people answer them. Think of it as an advice board, if you like. Some of the questions are bizarre, some peculiar, whereas others are normal.
The quality of answers varies too from the single sentence, to the rude to the outstanding. The latter is the type of answer you want to be providing.
Firstly, people are only banned if they abuse the system and provide consistently poor answers. So long as you stay on the right side of their terms of service and provide good quality answers you will have no trouble keeping your account. People have had the same account for years and have accumulated thousands of points, whereas others lose theirs in a few weeks because they break the terms of service.
The key to succeeding with Yahoo Answers is to find questions that you can answer and your website provides more information on.
The benefits of Answers are threefold.
1) You gain traffic from people reading your answer
2) Your answer, if chosen as the best answer, will rank in the search engines and get traffic directly
3) You can get a backlink from your answer which will boost your sites rankings.
As Yahoo Answers is considered an authority site by the other search engines, having links from it are considered highly relevant and very beneficial.
You must do an advanced search to find the best questions to answer. Search only questions opened in the last 7 days with your keyword. This will give you the most relevant questions. You then need to go through each question and find the ones you can answer well.
In order to keep your account and to get voted as the best answer, you need to provide high quality answers. This means reading the question thoroughly and understand what is asked.
Start your answer with a greeting, e.g. “Hi there” or “Hi, thanks for your question”. This instantly makes your answer stand out from the crowd and will start to build a relationship with the questioner.
Then provide your answer and sign off with something equally friendly such as “Hope this helps you out” and then sign out with your name.
You should only put your link in your answer directly if it has been asked for. Putting your link in every answer is likely to get your account banned. Your link needs to go in the resources box below. Don’t worry, it will get seen and clicked on, particularly if your answer is voted the best answer.
Yahoo Answers provides a very good method of generating targeted traffic through to your website. It works well for most types of sites and some people earn decent money just from Yahoo Answers. Use it well and wisely and you can receive many benefits from it.
Joshua Shoemaker
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