Wednesday, February 29, 2012

yahoo answers

Yahoo answers can be a good resource for driving traffic to your blog. There are thousands of people asking questions every day and many experts answering these questions on Yahoo Answers. The beauty of this site is that they allow you to leave a link to source of the answer if it is relevant and we can make use of this to get visitors to your site.

Now there are some very important things to note when placing your link. First make sure that your link does not ask readers to perform any commercial activity. Second, do not post affiliate links. Third and most important. your answers should be helpful and all of the readers, with respect, especially the person who asked the question. Failing to follow these steps may result in your answer being flagged by Yahoo which might lead to account suspension.

Yahoo Answers is a point based system. When you first sign up you are given 100 points and level 1,  for each question you ask, you loose 5 points and every answer posted you get 2 points added. If your answer is chosen as best then you earn 10 points. It takes 250+ points to get to level 2. In level 1, if you leave a link it will be seen as plain text. However, when you reach level 2 every link  you leave from this point will be a valid link that can be clicked on by the readers.. The following table shows the points and actions:


Points Table

ActionPoints
Begin participating on Yahoo! AnswersOne Time: 100
Ask a question-5
Choose a best answer for your question3
No Best Answer was selected by voters on your questionPoints Returned: 5
Answer a question2
Self-deleting an answer-2
Log in to Yahoo! AnswersOnce daily: 1
Vote for an answer1
Vote for No best answer0
Have your answer selected as the best answer10
Receive a "thumbs-up" rating on a best answer that you wrote (up to 50 thumbs-up are counted)1 per "thumbs-up"
Receive a violation-10

Yahoo Answers has levels and each level offers a different benefit.  As you progress to higher levels some of the limitations are removed. The following table provides more information:


Level
Points
Questions
Answers
Comments
Stars
Ratings
Votes
7
25,000+
* unlimited *
100
unlimited
200
6
10,000 - 24,999
* unlimited *
100
unlimited
150
5
5,000 - 9,999
* unlimited *
100
unlimited
125
4
2,500 - 4,999
20
80
40
100
unlimited
100
3
1,000 - 2,499
15
60
30
100
unlimited
75
2
250 - 999
10
40
20
100
unlimited
50
1
1 - 249
5
20
10
10
0

*All limitations are per day
People have asked questions on just about everything. If your blog deals with a particular topic then find questions on those topics. When you answer them, try to make your answers match as much as possible. If you regularly answer on a topic, then you will be awarded with the top contributor status and the next time you answer a question readers see you as an authority which eventually drives them to your blog. The key to success is answer regularly. Make sure you engage the readers with good content that should willingly lead them to click your blog link in the source.

First browse through available categories and pick one that is closely related to your blog topic. Then start contributing your answers to that particular category until you become a top contributor. Once you reach this top contributor status everything looks easy and readers curiously check out the link in the source to see what a top contributor has referred them to because people trust you.

Try not to post links for every answer you post and/or answer, only if it is required or relevant to the answer.  One more advantage of using Yahoo Answers is that they tend to rank higher and this might drive a small amount of regular traffic to your site every month. The links are not followed so they do not pass any page rank and there is not much benefit from the SEO point of view which not that important since you just need visitors and yahoo answers will help get them to our site, if  good/quality information is provided.

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