Questions, questions, questions!
Internet users everywhere have questions. Beginning Internet Marketers are not excluded from the list of users that have questions that need to be answered.
What if I told you that by taking time to answer someone’s question, you can also benefit yourself and your site?
The first benefit is the feeling you should get from helping someone else. Helping others is one of the most fulfilling feelings you can have.
The second benefit at least for Internet Marketers, is the ability to get the word out about yourself and your site.
How is this done?
Well, there are many ways, but today I am going to focus on Yahoo Answers.
Let me walk you through an example of how I use Yahoo Answers to not only help someone with a question, but also to get the word out about
my site.
I have a post on my website about purchasing hosting.
Here are the steps I use to create a backlink to that post.
First I go to http://answers.yahoo.com . It’s free to register an account if you don’t have one.
Next I want to search for people that have a question that needs to be answered. The key here is to look for “open questions”.
An open question, is one that may have other answers, but the person who posted the question has not chosen any as the “best answer” yet.
Open question still allow me to post answers. Close questions do not.
To find some open question about Hosting here are the steps I follow.
- Search for open questions to answer
- I click on “Advanced” next to the “Search” button.
- In the Keyword field I type in my keyword “website hosting”
- I then select the bubble next to “Questions” in the “Search for keyword match in:” section.
- In the “Question Status” section, I fill in the bubble next to “Open Questions – Best answer has not been chosen”
- I leave everything else as default.
- Next, I click the blue “Search” button at the bottom right
Search for Open Questions
- Choose a Question
- A list of Open Questions will be shown. I then read the questions and see if there are any that relate to the blog post I want to link back to.
Open Questions
- A list of Open Questions will be shown. I then read the questions and see if there are any that relate to the blog post I want to link back to.
- Answer a Question and leave a link
- Once I find one, I click on the question and write an answer that will provide some benefit to the person asking the question. If I don’t have a good answer or something that will help them find the answer, it’s probably best that I move on to a different question.
- Like I said before, first and foremost I am looking to help the person asking the question. Once I have done that, I then want to
leave a link to my site in the “What’s your source?” box.
Answer and Link
Posted Answer and Link
Give it a try.
Answer 5 questions a day for a week and come back and leave me a comment with your results.
{ 8 comments }
Hi Eric,
I think that’s a really good idea and if you are truly providing helpful information you are building your own as well as your sites credibility, that is a win-win deal.
I really like the way your images expand, is that a plugin?
Thanks,
-Red
Red, you are correct this is a win-win deal. Unfortunately, many people forget the “leave helpful information” part and just post a bunch of spam.
The image plugin I am using is called “Lightbox 2″. Here is the link http://stimuli.ca/lightbox/
Let me know if you have any further questions about it, I’d be happy to help.
I frequently find that people ask questions on Yahoo, that would take at least 1000 words to come anywhere close to giving a good answer. It just makes sense to instead refer them to some good articles, you wrote about the topic.
Simon, thanks for stopping by. I agree, often times the only way to give a complete answer is by pointing to an external source.
Eric,
Good, basic review on Yahoo Answers. There appears to be significant debate on whether using Yahoo Answers is productive; apparently contributors must have developed a history of use before links are activated. If that’s the case, is Answers still worthwhile?
Bill you are correct, in order for your links to be active you have to be at Level 2. I’m sure this is an attempt to limit the number of people that create new accounts and post spam links.
My opinion is Yahoo answers is still worthwhile, but it should not be your only form of link building and traffic generation. You should also be posting relevant blog and forum comments, doing some article marketing and even some video marketing.
Also, get out there and chat it up on the social networks.
Here is the Yahoo scoring system if you are interested to see how long it would take to get to level 2.
Begin participating on Yahoo! Answers One Time: 100
Ask a question -5
Choose a best answer for your question 3
No Best Answer was selected by voters on your question Points Returned: 5
Answer a question 2
Deleting an answer -2
Log in to Yahoo! Answers Once daily: 1
Vote for an answer 1
Vote for No best answer 0
Have your answer selected as the best answer 10
Receive a “thumbs-up” rating on a best answer that you wrote (up to 50 thumbs-up are counted) 1 per “thumbs-up”
Eric,
Thanks for your follow up. When confronted with limited resources, it’s helpful to get others’ opinions on what they’re finding valuable.
Re: Level 2. Are you aware of what that point total must be?
Cheers.
You’re welcome Bill.
For level 2 you need to get to 250pts. It sounds like a lot, but you actually receive 100 pts when you create your account, so it isn’t that bad.
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