In the spirit of my traffic generation post and Kristi’s book (click for my review of Blog Post promotion book), I decided to bring one thing closer to you – using Yahoo! Answers for traffic generation and blog post promotion.
What will you find in this post?
A detailed tutorial on how to use Yahoo! Answers and what options are there. That is the “technical” part. For the non-technical part, I will tell you how to use it to get the max out of it and what results have I had with YA.
Also, if something is not important, I will skip it and try to make it as simple and useful as I can.
Before we start with Yahoo! Answers
The first thing you will need is a Yahoo account. I am sure almost everyone has it, but if not, go register one.
Once you have a Yahoo account, log in and go to Answers.yahoo.com. That is where all this fun will be happening.
Let’s get on with it
The first thing you will see on the home page, and the most important, will be this:
As you can see, there are four tabs. I will explain each and every.
One little note about “best answer” I will be mentioning a lot. Obviously there are questions and answers. But in YA there is the “best answer” which is the one that has been chosen either by the person who asked the question or other YA users.
That answer is featured under the question, gets the most points and that is the spot you want your answers to be in. There are usually 4 days to answer the question.
I will start with About tab, so you can start using YA right from the first moment.
About tab on Yahoo! Answers
The links that you will see when you hover over this tab are:
- How answers works – where you can learn the very basics of the service.
- Points & Levels – will show you the exact number of points you will gain or lose depending on different actions taken in YA. Your level on YA depends on the number of points you collect. Study it so you know what to expect.
- Community Guidelines – dos and don’ts of YA.
It is important to know a few things when it comes to points and levels. To get people to click your link on YA, you need that link to be live.
The links you post as a level 1 user are not live! Still, that does not mean you should not post any. Because once you become a level 2 user, all of your links will become live (clickable).
Home tab on Yahoo! Answers
There are three choices in the YA home tab:
- Ask questions
- Answer questions
- Discover great answers
Ask
When you type the question in the field and hit Continue, you will be taken to a new, more detailed version of asking the question.
You have the option to write more details about the question. The next window you will get is the one where you will choose the category of your question. After that, you can preview and submit your question.
Discover
This option will basically open resolved questions (you can’t answer those) in all categories for deeper browsing.
Answer
Answer questions – Browse Open Questions option will take you to a new window where you can do a more detailed browsing.
Arrow number 1 – choose a category.
Arrow number 2 - choose if you want to browse:
- Open questions you can add the answer to.
- In voting means you can only vote on the already given answers.
- Resolved are questions that already have the best answer chosen.
Arrow number 3 – You can sort the questions in several ways:
- newest to oldest and vice versa
- most popular
- fewest answers to most answers and vice versa
Before I go on with this part, let me give you a few tips on these options.
Good ideas for the question browsing
Although you will be using Open questions to sort the ones you can give an answer to, you should not easily discard In voting and Resolved ones.
You can use In voting questions to vote on the offered answers and gain points. Be fair and don’t blind vote, YA is a great community and it would be nice that the best answers are really the best.
You can use Resolved questions to learn what type of answers are the best ones. That way you can always post great answers and hopefully be chosen as “best answer”.
Browse categories tab
If you hover over it, you will get the list of all categories that you can then click on. If you click the tab, you will get the window like in the image above, for further browsing.
Search Yahoo! Answers
As you can see in the first image, at the bottom, there is a Search option where you can type in your keyword and do a search on it. If you choose the Advanced Search, you can choose what type of questions you want to be listed.
For example, if you want to answer questions about Twitter, you will type in Twitter and choose open questions in Advanced search.
How do you answer a question?
Click on the image to enlarge it and see the simple steps you need to take after you find an open question you want to answer.
My activity tab
Here is a screenshot of my YA profile:
This tells you straight away why I had great success with Yahoo! Answers. Out of 75 answers I posted over there, 71% were chosen as Best answers.
I am actually very inactive on YA but still have great results. The time I was really active was when I was trying to get to level 2 so my links would become live links.
Why is this percentage important? Some can say it isn’t. But a lot of people will take a look at your profile before deciding if they should trust your answers or not. The higher percentage of best answers, the more they trust you.
That means that you establish yourself as an expert (I don’t like this word, though) in your niche. That simply means you will get more clicks on your links.
How to get high percentage of best answers?
You must choose both questions and answers carefully!
Some good questions to answer are:
- The ones that were just posted and seem urgent. There is a big possibility that the person who asked it, will choose your answer as the best one, straight away.
- The ones that are about to be closed. You can read the answers and write a better one.
- The ones with no answers.
How to answer:
- Write an answer that fully answers the question. Don’t make people click to find the full answer, that doesn’t usually work on YA.
- Attach a link in the Source box, not the answer!
- Don’t attach link to every answer you make! I usually answer 2 questions without links and one with a link.
Why shouldn’t you attach links all the time? You are kinda competing with other YA users. Some of them will report (flag) answers out of pure jealousy. I saw too many accounts being closed for no obvious reason.
However, you can complain about it and if your account is restored, the person who reported you will have “less weight” next time they report someone.
Why should you avoid to answer questions with too many answers? Because when it comes to voting, no one is really going to read through 20 answers and vote for yours (or any best one). They will just blind vote and that can ruin your score.
An example
OK, I am talking the talk, let me walk the walk. Here are two of my best answers, posted 7 months ago. One was chosen as the best by the person who asked the question and one was chosen by voters (the questions are related to my pet site):
Is my parakeet sick?
How many words can a parakeet learn?
Let’s analyze them.
My answers are easier to read than others (formatting). They fully answer the questions. They both have links but only as a “source of my info”, the whole info is in the answer. They won over some of the Top contributors’ answers.
I think if you read all the answers, you will see how different they are.
Important thing to consider
Why should you always go for the best answer? As I mentioned, if your answer gets chosen as the best one, it will be displayed immediately below the question, at the top of the page.
Yahoo! Answers come up in search results a lot! So if your answer is the best and someone is searching for that question in Google, guess what that means. Yes, you are gonna get some traffic.
Extra shot
Don’t forget one more awesome possibility when it comes to using YA. When you read so many questions in your niche, you will notice a pattern.
Some questions are asked over and over again. Those are great post ideas. You can get literally thousands of post ideas from Yahoo! Answers.
True story
A friend of mine that has a site about health answered a YA questions once. The questions was along the lines if there is any use of eating the orange pulp. She answered the question the best she could and attached the link to her post about oranges and health on her site 
Believe it or not, that question and her (best) answer was featured on Yahoo Home page as one of the stories of the day (yes, that can happen) and you can only imagine how many visits she got that day and for some time after it. We are talking about tens of thousands people in a day!
Post bullseye
Yahoo! Answers can be a great source of traffic if used properly. It can also help you promote your blog by answering related questions and pointing people to some of your posts.
You should definitely play fair there, cause you don’t want to be banned and kill that traffic source.
Yahoo! Answers is perfect for any blog and any niche!
Yahoo answers are great way to extract huge amount of traffic only if you are consistent. The advantage of Yahoo answers is that you get backlinks and as far as i know you can make money from yahoo answers also? (correct me if i’m wrong)
Basically you could, if you were bringing traffic to pages that sell something. The consistency is great but the funny thing is that I am still getting traffic from YA and I don’t think I’ve answered a question over there for at least 6 months.
Thanks for the comment, Vivek
Hi Brankica
Wow I had no idea this was such a great traffic source. I will be referring back to this once my project sorted
Thanks for such an informative post. Really enjoyable read and easy to understand too.
Patricia Perth Australia
Sorry I didn’t answer your questions after taking in all the information you have given us lol
I haven’t used it before. I like the idea of trying it out. And I don’t have anything to add other than…the only problem I would have is once I get on and start reading the answers, I could end up spending too much time there
Patricia Perth Australia
Same here, that is what used to happen to me at the beginning.
But if you set a limit to yourself, and I know you are much better at that than I am, you can make a blast. Especially for the lavender blog at the moment.
The new project is also perfect for traffic generation from YA.
I would suggest you join it and start answering one or two questions every day (don’t put links in all) so you would reach the level 2 in some time.
Then when you actually start blasting this source, your links will be live.
Thanks for both comments!
That’s a good suggestion. Will get an account and look for lavender questions to answer. Thanks for that Brankica.
Patricia Perth Australia
I just opened up a YA account about 2 hours ago and answered a few questions and then I read this post.. I guess we think alike
I received a ton of traffic from YA on my last blog and forgot all about it until recently.
There are a few things that changed since I last used it and your post cleared that up for me!!
Well, after that contest post over at Famous Bloggers, people are asking me about how to use some of those tools so I thought about explaining this one first because it has so much potential.
Thanks for the comment and can’t wait to see how it works out for you.
Hi Brankica,
Thank you for one more superb post!
I have been using YA for some times and yes, it gives me some good amount of traffic.
More than welcome, Rose and thanks for confirming that it is a great traffic source
I skimmed this post, but didn’t see the real proof, Google Analytics statistics.
I’ve tried many different things to generate traffic. The most successful being optimizing for search engines.
I cannot help wondering how much more traffic you could be getting had you focused on the largest traffic source on the Internet, Google’s results pages.
Yahoo answers can be a lot of fun, but I have never seen them as being a huge source for getting visitors to your website. Additionally, their backlinks are 100% NOFOLOW.
Just last month, I did a little keyword research and found one phrase that I wrote an article about and it brought me over nine hundred visitors within thirty days from Google’s SERPS.
If we want results, I feel we have to go where we can get the highest return on our investment from.
For me, Yahoo answers has always delivered poor results in relation to the time invested. SEO on the other hand has increased traffic and online revenue tremendously.
Well, Jordy, we are talking about two different things here.
I do focus on Google as well and get a lot of traffic from it too. The pet site I mention gets more than 80% of traffic from Google. It got PR 1 after 3 months being live online at the time. I am not working on it for at least 6 months now and get more and more traffic every single day – again from Google. So I would know how to deal with Google, don’t you think.
But there are several things to take in consideration – Google is not the only Search engine and you should not put all of your eggs in one basket. If you get dropped by it, you won’t have a single visitor then.
Not every single traffic source works for everyone and I personally had great success with YA without investing too much time. If it didn’t work for you, maybe you didn’t make it work for you. Maybe your niche was not perfect for it, maybe you didn’t choose the right questions or get a lot of best answers. Maybe it was just a bad day for your blog on YA.
You say you skimmed through the post, which is really not something people would say even if they did. That means you haven’t read it and you don’t know what have I written about. Well, I do explain in details how to use YA for best results and if you read my blog for awhile now, you would know that I never recommend stuff I haven’t tried and tested myself.
When it comes to nofollow attribute, I am guessing you know about Search engines, right? I am also guessing that you know that Google is not the only search engine out there. But it is the only SE that looks at the nofollow attribute.
So if you do a back link search in Yahoo, you will see all the back links to a site (more detailed and more info than Google search) and you will see that in eyes of the other SE those links are counted as – back links!
I would also tell you that not the same source work the same for everyone and if Google works the best for you, it might not work the best for everyone else. There are bloggers that get the most traffic from YouTube, for example.
Oh, since you skimmed through the post, I guess you missed one important part and that is – Yahoo Answers show up on first page of Google a lot. People will check them out and if you have the best answer, you are very likely getting the click.
If there is anything else you need help with, I am more than glad to help. Thanks so much for the comments, I really appreciate it
Brankica, thanks for approving my post and answering with insightful information.
In my defense, I answered all four of the questions you asked at the end of the article.
I will bookmark your blog and visit again!
Hey even if you haven’t it’s OK, I don’t get all the answers from other people anyway, lol.
Brankica,
Even for those who fail to ‘see’ the real power behind Yahoo! Answers it is one of the featured resources for getting targeted traffic in every serious marketing program.
In my short experience I tried to answer a few questions in the guitar niche but honestly couldn’t add any value to the open questions I found.
The questions were pretty naive but I guess it all comes down to picking the questions where you can actually get something out of it, like answering the question but leaving them asking for more and a link.
This is for sure a direct result from your awesome traffic post!
Talk soon!
Hey Jordy,
I never reply to people in a comment thread but I had to do it.
I don’t even think this Yahoo! Answers post was even intended as building page rank, totally misunderstood the concept of building targetted traffic.
As Brankica is, it also surprised me a little bit to read the “skimmed” through the post bit from the mere beginning of your comment and also mentioning Google Analytics right in your first sentence.
This post is not even about that!
What surprised me even a little more is that you started talking about SEO and keyword research and article writing when it had nothing to do with the subject.
I’m shocked I went through your comment a few times and it doesn’t adds up to the post or to the subject.
I think this is the akward moment of the day I guess.
Anyway good luck with big G and keep building that… page rank.
Talk soon!
Hey Sergio,
thanks for the comment.
I was actually considering if I should approve Jordy’s comment because it does not agree with the commenting rules posted on this blog.
But since he didn’t read the post, it is safe to assume he didn’t read the rules either .
I approved it anyway so I can explain the issues he brought up.
Anyway, to reply to you. You are completely right about finding the right question. The good thing when it comes to “your competition” is that some are just too lazy to type a good answer so they simply write the first thing that comes to their mind.
Those are the ones that can be won easily.
Good example is also (there are some I saw yesterday) that a person will ask what is the best way to use Twitter, for example. There will be 5 to 10 answers all offering paid services. If you reply with a real answer that gives value and point to a blog post of yours (or even someone else’s) that is a winner.
Brankica you are more than welcome!
You may not know this but you have made me laugh, mentored me and even made me scratch my head about some stuff a few times since I met you.
For this, I treasure every reply I get from you and I have finally understood that by commenting not only I can learn more about a particular subject, I can also learn a lot from the person replying.
Gives that feeling of -unconscious- friendship.
Anyway to break a little bit the ‘personal touch’ of this comment (and knowing in advance that lots of my favorite online people will see and read this thread) I just want to let you guys know that I would be the first person to join your master mind if you ever decide to create one in the future.
Such great persons like Sire, Adrienne, Elise, Ingrid (in no particular order) and so many other friends of yours, have proven to not be only likeable but also smart, great and such very cool friends.
You all have a pretty special place inside me and I only wished I could be wiser to code a program for you to master mind it.
Special Note: This is NOT a suicidal note lol I just felt that moment of the day to thank people that have contributed to make me a better person not just online but in every aspect!
Peace!
PS. Sorry if this comment doesn’t meet the commenting rules policy of Live Your Love but it was made straight from the heart, does that even counts? I hope! lol
Take care my dear ones!
You made me laugh so hard now
You are allowed to post any comment here cause you proved yourself a long time ago
You know this makes a lot of sense. It’s similar to the methods always advocated for gaining traction over on LinkedIn, namely jump in and answer questions.
Although I never considered Yahoo Answers -but they DO pop up all the time in the Google SERPS. So even if the links are nofollow as Jordy says, they can still result in traffic from human eyes looking for more knowledge.
Hey John,
basically it is the same thing like answering questions on LinkedIn or Quora.
I often run into Yahoo Answers at the top of the search results and that is why I value them more. As I said, nofollow applies to Google only and those links will come up as backlinks in other SE.
Way back, I have used Yahoo answers and decided to abandon it as I thought that it was just a lot of noise and was not worth the effort. Then again I never did think about using it the way you describe it here, so guess will just have to “reactivate” my account and re-use it a bit to see how it goes. Thanks!
Hey there
Nice to see you again. This “strategy” is what I had success with and I hope it would work for most people.
If not, I guess tweaking is what is gonna show the perfect way.
Have you used Yahoo! Answers before? No.
Do you like the idea of using it? In theory, but in practice I’d be rubbish at it.
Will you use it? Not likely at the moment.
Would you add anything to this? I value your posts on subjects like this because even if it’s not something I’m particularly interested in, you make it interesting for me to the point I consider it.
In this case I am interested, but not enough to get past the physical problem of it being too much typing for little gain – because I doubt I’d make many best answers. For now I’ve determined that my strategy should be guest posts and blog commenting, which is a big enough step for me to tackle.
I LOLed at this part: “I’d be rubbish at it”
I know you would not because you are not rubbish at your blog.
I do understand your point about typing and not getting anything in return. That is the reason why I created a “strategy” for myself on how to find the questions that have the most potential to bring me the “best answer”.
Yeah, but I’d be rubbish at that bit too! I’m not writing it off completely, but reckon I should at least give my other ideas a run for their money first.
Hi Brankica,
This looks like a good additional traffic source and you did a very nice job introducing the important parts of using it. I have not used it, but I will probably give it a shot for a niche site or two.
BTW, I have a parakeet so I like that you mentioned them here. Great pets!
Have a great day!
Hey Mark,
parakeets have to be my favorite pets. Well at least until recently when I finally got my Amstaff puppy
Although YA will work well for any blog, I think they are great for niche sites because in a niche you kinda know more than an average user, hence you can expect more best answers.
Ha! I don’t even know what an Amstaff is…
Off to wikipedia now. Have a great day!
This is her
Those pets seem very VERY dangerous to me but very cool as well.
In one of my weird teenager past jobs (long time ago) I used to work in a dog’s (I don’t even know the word but they trimmed hair and gave bath pets) and I got bit by every damn dog we received lol
I just had that ‘thing’ about dogs that they seem to dislike.
You know when they give you this advice of ‘don’t ever run, just stand there and yell at the dog’ well it doesn’t works.
There was a time when I was running (I always ran to places it seemed boring to just walk somewhere) and a dog was out on the street as her lady was happily gardening out with a hose and the garage door way open, well fast forward I was being chased by this huuuuge dog and I even out run it and then I remembered the golden rule… ‘don’t ever run’ surprisingly enough I suddenly stopped.
I got one of my butt cheeks completely murdered by this dog and it felt so damn ugly that I was screaming my friend’s name along with very unpleasant names.
From that day I have NEVER stopped once whenever I get chased by a dog.
PS. P.J. looks like a VERY COOL DOG!
)) can you take them for runs?
I am laughing like crazy now
P.J. and Cash are my puppy Roma’s parents. Roma is actually a show dog, meaning all her family is like champions in shows, water sports, weight pulling, etc. When she was only 8 weeks old she used to tire me down, how energetic she is. She is 4.5 months old now.
I am having a blast with her: she gets in the mud at least 3 times a day so I have to bathe her 3 times a day, she will jump straight on my head when she wants to watch TV with me (and she is already 25 lbs), she loved typing all over my blog and so on
Dang I feel tired already! lol
Congrats on Roma!
Being a (sharp) shooter -like Ingrid says- and having a killer dog, really, you don’t need any more security now haha
Brankica, I’ve been playing around with YA for a while now. Stumbled over your tips, loved them, tweeted them, and wanted to leave, but then I saw your puppy
I got one a few months ago – Sam is a mittelschnauzer – doing lots of training and absolutely loving it! If you have any good dog training sites to share, please email me – I am exploring raw meaty bones diet, highly skeptical of all kibble and like karen pryor positive reinforcement training. Going for a big dog training seminar in a month or so – very excited and scared to make a fool of myself 
Lol, who would know Roma will keep people around
I love this Youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/kikopup, the girl is awesome and I use her videos for Roma’s training.
I am not feeding raw (yet) but Roma’s brother’s owner is, so she learned from this site http://preymodelraw.com/. Hope it helps
subscribed and bookmarked! thanks so much Brankica im your follower and fan as of right now
Awwww, thanks so much! Roma is thanking too, she is a very happy puppy, it was her 1s B-day yesterday
Welcome to my blog and hope you will stick around!
I have heard about it before as well, many people are using it to generate traffic but you need to patience in this process. You won’t be publishing your live link unless you create your repo there.
All it takes to publish live links is a level 2. It isn’t hard to reach it if you answer a few questions and win the best answer.
Wow hon – you have once again put out some of the best info I’ve come across today. I have never used Yahoo answers but I am now.
I need to read your post more thoroughly and take some notes (I always take notes on the best info that I find because otherwise I lose it!) but I’ll be putting this to use for sure!
Thanks!
Hey Danielle,
since you haven’t used it before, why not give it a try. If it doesn’t work for you at least you will know you gave it a shot. But considering that even Kristi is using them (she mentions YA in her book) I am pretty sure you will find a way to get the max out of it!
Thank you for this post. It will come in handy as I am in the process of figuring out how to get more traffic to my site. This post will be reread many times!
Don’t forget that list in my contest post. Try one by one, out of those 50 I bet you can find at least 15 that will do an awesome job for you.
Hi Brankica
I am using Yahoo Answers. In fact I am at level 3. I don’t get much traffic from it, but maybe I am not using it optimal. I loved the tip about writing a post about questions that are being asked over and over again. That is very smart. I will try that some day.
Hey Thomas,
traffic does depend a bit on the niche you are in. Then again, maybe there is some tweaking in your strategy that can help.
And when it comes to post ideas, YA is a bottomless pit of those
Hi Brankica,
I remember back in ’07 when I used to solve Maths questions on YA just for fun and some time wasting.
Must confess that I have only been there again once since creating my website. Guess I will go back again but this time for some useful traffic generation!
Thanks for the reminder.
Hey Maky, more than welcome. I am thinking that you can actually make great results over there with your site!
Fantastic tutorial, Brankica.
I used YA only a bit when I first started blogging but you’ve renewed my interest after reading this. Didn’t work it nearly enough the first time around, was too overwhelmed with other stuff.
Plus there was some negativity with some folks bashing others for simply asking questions (silly).
I’m putting this on my list to reestablish a presence. I’m glad you posted, which is quite helpful. Good stuff!
Hey Jimi,
there are a bunch of kids over there that have nothing to do in life but do stupid things online.
That is the reason I mention the jealousy as well. You kinda need to be nice but helpful.
It is pretty easy actually. When I was active a lot on YA, I used to search for questions more than it took me to answer them. But that resulted in high number of best answers that again brought me the traffic.
Make sure to send me some feedback about it
Youth is wasted on the young, as they say. LOL
Definitely going to check it out again, will provide you with some feedback as well.
Thanks again.
Yahoo answers is one of the good place to get backlinks but I have seen many people don’t consider it at all, don’t know why?? You’ll also get opportunity to enhance your knowledge by reading the answers of other guys.
Hey Sam,
people are too consumed with nofollow stuff and keep forgetting that there is more to online business than just getting dofollow links. But you know what, that makes it easier to get all those best answers, with less competition around, lol.
Thanks for great explanation on this and it must be a great way then. I have never tried this as FB and Twitter seems the best channel now
Twitter and Facebook can be great sources of traffic but Yahoo! Answers will bring highly targeted traffic that usually sticks around on the blog and easily converts to customers.
Hi Brankica,
Just when I hear Yahoo Answers is passe, I come here and read your post. It sounds like it’s definitely worth getting in to, if I use your tips and strategery.
Plus I like to answer questions.
Since we’re also talking pets… I used to be a pet sitter and it was a lot of fun. Coming into a house where the pet was absolutely thrilled to see you – what’s not to love about that?
Thanks,
Peggy
Lol, my puppy gets so crazy about new people she jump up in the air to almost reach your head. She knocked my teeth out a few times, lol. I love pets!
I really had great success with YA, and although some bloggers will “preach” the same ways of traffic generation over and over again, I love these sources they consider passe because it makes it easier for me to get more fresh traffic, lol.
Not sure if you have read my contest post http://www.famousbloggers.net/50-traffic-sources.html there are many more interesting ways of getting traffic.
I used to use Yahoo Answers
This is such good information for someone who has never used it before. Unfortunately, there are a lot of spammers I find in YA that abuse it soooo much and post affiliate links like crazy! And I remember the layout used to be different back when I was using it, I think they changed it to help battle spam.
Good stuff!!
Hey Elise,
yup, spammers are over there too.
The other day I was searching for some Social media questions so take a screen shot of and run into a Twitter Q that needs one simple answer, a simple free tip and that is it.
Well, there were 5 answers and all of them said “you have to use a paid service, try this one”. All 5 from different companies for different companies. So they are all doing the same stupid s**t
Wow this is a great guide for using yahoo answers. I think that it is indeed one of the easiest ways to build backlinks and bring traffic to your site. I have used it a few times in the past. However, I stopped, because I was annoyed with the spam and the amount ignorant people that where there.
I think that I will try to use it again, because I do think that it can be a very effective tool. I had forgotten all about yahoo answers. Thanks for bringing it back to my attention. As a newbie I am always trying find more useful tools to help improve my blog.
Hey Sabrina,
I know exactly what you mean about spammers and ignorant people. There are some real idiots over there.
But nothing is easy when it comes to traffic so I kinda try not to pay attention to those, lol.
Thanks for the comment and welcome to my blog. You should check my post over at Famous Bloggers, there are more interesting traffic generation ideas http://www.famousbloggers.net/50-traffic-sources.html/
Hello Brankica!
Can I make a quick suggestion on searching for questions on Yahoo Answers?
Try searching for something like this in Google: site:http://answers.yahoo.com/ traffic blog
Good luck with the contest! Cosmin.
That is a great idea. I usually do a search on YA itself but I think this is also a great way to do it. Thanks for the idea and welcome to my blog. And thanks for the nice wishes
I have two quick questions – have been answering the occasional YA question over the past ~2 months (primarily about babies and sleep) and have worked my way up to a level 2.
1) I don’t see any Yahoo backlinks from any search engine. Even for questions answered post-level 2. So I’m confused as to if this is a good backlink tool or not?
2) The people who ask questions (presumably exhausted parents who are too tired to bother) almost NEVER select a best answer. I believe my answers are generally the best but you wouldn’t guess from looking at my profile. Is there anything I can do that isn’t obnoxious to gently prod people to make a selection? Or do I just not worry about it and accept that tired parents just don’t bother.
Thanks!
Alexis
Hey Alexis, if you recently reached level 2, that made your links live not long time ago, so it would make sense that they need to be picked up by search engines. You can ping pages with your links to speed up the process.
When I check backlinks I always do a Yahoo search for them, cause Google shows way less links, guess due to their nofollow attribute. Have you checked in Yahoo? Cause my Yahoo Answers links do show up over there.
About people choosing the best answer, you are right. That happens less than being chosen in voting. I found that the most best answers you can get from the person who asked the question is if the question seemed urgent or some of them even say “I will chose the best answer”.
With other people answering questions as well, I can see them being annoyed if you would ask to be chosen as the best. You can keep track of your answers and once they are in voting ask friends to vote for you.
Hope this helps..if not shoot me an e-mail and we will talk more about this.
You were right – it just took a little time for the Yahoo Answers backlinks to show up in the search engines. Thanks for the help!
Alexis
Glad you can see those links now
Now back to building more!
Please can you help me i was wrote our site link in a source box but this is not show link properly its show only text. can you help me what to do for this.
& i have one more question how much time it taken approval of our answer in yahoo answering.
You have to be level 2 user to be able to post live links in the source box.
Answers are approved automatically.
Used Yahoo Answer When I had a niche blog..
It’s easy to attract traffic using your best answer,but i used it lot for generating post ideas.
Here, first time i read a detail guide about it.
Hmm,i going to try it again
Thank You Brankica