I’ve resisted trying Yahoo Answers for some time now. However, the last two weeks I decided to play around with Yahoo Answers to see if it was a viable option to drive traffic to my websites. I’m happy to report that this could be a hidden gem when it comes to building traffic! But be warned, do it wrong and you’ll end up banned. Here’s how I’ve been doing it.
Creating an Account on Yahoo Answers
The first thing you’ll need is a Yahoo account. It’s easy, just go on over to Yahoo.com and sign up. I would not suggest you use your main account if you have one. Yahoo accounts are easy enough to come by without putting your main account in jeopardy.
Next, click on “Answers” in the upper part of the sidebar to the left.
Once there, take 5 minutes to create an avatar. This is more important than what you think it is. Yahoo has a avatar generator. Use it! An avatar, for what ever reason, gives you a little more trust. When you look at most of the spammy answers given, you’ll see the spammers are too lazy to use an avatar for the most part.
After you have your avatar created, you’re pretty much ready to start answering questions.
Tips For Answering Questions on Yahoo Answers
The worst thing you can do on Yahoo Answers is to start pasting a bunch of worthless replies with links to your site. Chances are your account will be banned by the end of the day. I see it happen there all the time.
I don’t recommend spamming Yahoo Answers. It doesn’t do you any good.
Now if your website is about something that your passionate about, then you’ll be answering questions in Yahoo Answers about your interest as well. This is why it’s a great match up for your site. If you’re an expert on Technology and your website is about Technology, chances are you’ll find some Questions that are being posted by Yahoo Answers users that pertain to your niche.
The more quality answers you provide, the more your increase your score. For each answer you give, you’ll receive 2 points. There are other ways of receiving points, but answering questions and getting them *Starred* are to of the most common.
They have levels that you go up as you answer questions. You’ll start out at Level 1 and work your way up. As a Level 1 member, you’ll only be able to answer 20 questions per day, so pick your questions wisely! As you reach other levels, you’ll be able to answer more questions per day with you account.
Strategies
Yahoo Answers has a left side bar with Categories. I drill down to the specific category and there’ll be a list of the Answers in the center of the page. The top of the list is the Question asked most recently. I refresh my browser constantly trying to be the first person to Answer a question.
I DO NOTput a link in every Answer and I don’t suggest you do either. You’ll get banned pretty quick. The group over on Yahoo Answers are pretty sensitive when it comes to spamming. Any whiff of a spammer and POOF, you’re gone.
Just to make it look natural, which it is for me because like helping people, you should be answering questions in other categories if you can help.
I only post links to my site in about 1 out of every 5-7 answers I give. Remember, you’re trying to avoid drawing unwanted attention to yourself!
That’s about it, it’s easy to use. Once you get good with one Profile, you might want to think about opening another account and trying a second Profile on another site 
BTW, from what I can tell, the traffic you get from Yahoo Answers converts very well. After all, if you’ve done it right, you have already showed them your an expert in your field!
10 responses so far ↓
1 Donovan // Jul 30, 2007 at 11:28 am
Don,
This is exactly why I read your blog: you come up with stuff that has never occurred to me.
Good post!
I’m not sure how I managed to post this same comment on the wrong post, but I did. Doh!
2 5 Star Affiliate Marketing Forums // Jul 30, 2007 at 12:42 pm
What’s Your Favorite Traffic Source?…
Don over at AffiliateWatcher blogged today about:
Yahoo Answers – Drive Targeted Traffic To Your Site…
3 Don // Jul 31, 2007 at 6:53 am
Thanks Donovan – I have a few more ideas I’m working on but they have to be fine tuned.
I posted that article yesterday morning and wrote it in a hurry. Here’s a few more tips.
Female avatars seem to get better results. Not sure why.
You should mix up the links you giving out. Never just give out the link to your site. If someone (say for example…an Answers editor?) checks your profile and reads your past answers and all they see are links to your site…busted.
4 Carl Strohmeyer // Jul 31, 2007 at 1:37 pm
I have to agree and disagree.
I agree with sharing ones experience, however the way Yahoo answers is currently set up it rewards those with too much time on their hands which results (at least my category of expertise; fish) in very poor anecdotal answers getting passed around as fact. The so called top contributor here is especially poor in the field of disease treatment and medication yet many recognize otherwise and he is believed.
There is no way someone who has a career (in my case performing real research and more) to be a top contributor, so the best I can hope for is to go in there and give out better information (http://www.americanaquariumproducts.com/Aquarium_Information.html ) backed by good resources and hope others reading this will follow these links, however most of the time this is not the case.
I am not against going there to try and give out correct advice or simply to try and move persons to more credible resources however in the threads I usually have answered posting links is a necessity to get the correct information out, as you cannot give a good answer without more outside resources, information, and often pictures and thankfully in one of the few plusses I can say for Yahoo Answers is that the links I have posted (which are all to add further information) have not caused any problems.
Hopefully Yahoo will recognize the problems and do away with the “top contributor” and voting features which tend to exacerbate the poor information problems there.
I outline this in this blog: http://fish-as-pets.blogspot.com/
5 Don // Jul 31, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Hi Carl,
IMHO, if one just goes to Yahoo Answers and starts throwing up a bunch of wrong or irrelivant info with a link, that’s spam in my book.
On the other hand, if I go there and spend an hour answering some questions for people who need quality answers, I should at least be able to leave a few of my links laying around for the time I’ve spent there.
I do see where you’re coming from. I have some of the same gripes about Wikipedia. That’s probably why they made Wiki edit capable. But, you know, just because it’s on Wiki, people take that stuff as gospel!
Don
6 Carl Strohmeyer // Jul 31, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Don,
I totally agree with your comment above, both about Yahoo answers and with Wikipedia.
Your point about Wikipedia brings up another peeve of mine about the internet and in particular Google. Outside of my problems with Yahoo Answers I like Yahoo and MSN as search engine, however (and I know I am in the minority) I do not care for Google as much as they give way to much prominence to “authority” links (such as Wikipedia or CNN). This plays out often again in my field that anecdotal snake aquarium information sites come up ahead of real research sites. My information site; http://americanaquariumproducts.com/Aquarium_Information.html does well on MSN and Yahoo but not so on Google in part because even though I have a lot of good one way hyperlinks, a lot of ezines with good research, and a lot of forums references, Google gives little value to them (unlike Yahoo, MSN). This has been even more true lately as even the amount of links to this site are growing rapidly (organic), Google has further devalued them in favor of “expensive” authority links. And those who say content will bring in quality back links are very ignorant of the very petty and dishonest pet industry.
7 Steven Snell // Aug 5, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Hi Don,
Thanks for the information. I’ll have to give this a try too.
8 Yahoo Answers Update // Aug 8, 2007 at 7:14 pm
[...] you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Last week I told you how I had been using Yahoo Answers to drive traffic to some of my sites. I want to give you an update on how this one method of traffic generation is [...]
9 J. Wood // Oct 4, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Very interesting idea, I already have an avatar so I should start answering questions.
10 Hosting guide easy // Oct 9, 2008 at 1:51 pm
I have tried yahoo answer and its worth if you use that correctly i have been banned by posting my link on every answer i gave.
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