Using Yahoo Answers for Free Advertising and Backlinks

One of the main activities of any blog or website is, wherever possible, to take advantage of free targeted traffic; this is why webmasters spend so much time trying to find ways of improving their position in the Google search results. However, there is one very simple method of getting free traffic which is often overlooked by webmasters: Yahoo Answers. The bottom line is that Yahoo Answers is the largest community of knowledge sharing on the Web and getting some of this huge audience interested in your products or services can yield huge benefits.

Not only is Yahoo Answers a great method of generating targeted traffic, it is also a terrific source of free advertising. If you add this free publicity technique to your marketing strategies, you will soon discover how incredibly powerful it is.

One of the key aspects of this strategy is that it is all about participation; so, the first step you need to take is to sign up (by visiting answers.yahoo.com) and to complete your profile, adding as much information to it as you are happy to share. It is also a good idea to upload an avatar; probably not your logo; perhaps your photo; or some other friendly graphic associated with your brand.

Next, you need to familiarize yourself with the Yahoo Answers platform: browse through the categories of question which are relevant to your niche; and decide which types of question you are interested in answering.

Before you begin to answer any questions, however, you should have a clear idea of what you want to promote. This way you can home in on those topics that will be relevant to the site you want to promote via Yahoo Answers.

Your first public activity will be to answer lots and lots of questions; try and aim for the maximum allowed, which is twenty questions per day. The reason for this is that Yahoo operate a system of points and levels: when you sign up, you are a level one user and Yahoo allocates you 100 points; in order to reach level 2, you need 250 points; and, until you reach level 2, you will not be able to include backlinks in your answers.

You are assigned 2 points for every question you answer; so, if you answer the maximum of 20 questions, you will earn 40 points daily; and, in four days, you will have reached level 2 status. However, if any of your answers is picked as the best answer, you are awarded an extra 10 points; and also, every time you yourself vote for answer, you are awarded an extra point. So, as you can see, achieving level 2 status is not a tall order, and it is definitely worth the effort.

Once you have reached level 2, whenever you reply to a question, you have the possibility of including a website link in the "Source" box accompanying your answer. This is an easy way to get some free advertising and to encourage visitors to find more information on the subject discussed in the question.

Even after you have reached the coveted level 2, it is still beneficial to supply the best answers you can. Answers which are picked as best answers will achieve a higher rating in the Yahoo search results and will inevitably bring more traffic to your website or to your affiliate offer. So spend some time studying those answers, which have been picked as best answers and try to analyze what made them appeal to the person asking the question.

Due to the large number of people who may reply to questions, it is also important to be the quickest to respond to questions, which are still open for answer. You should also do your best to answer each question as thoroughly as possible and be sure to address the person who sent the question by his or her first name (if possible). This will increase your chances of being chosen as provider of the best answer.

Yahoo Answers includes a spell checker; so be sure to use it whenever possible to minimize errors; or type your answer in Microsoft Word, check the grammar there and copy and paste into Yahoo Answers when you are happy with it. Take your time to get it right; do not forget that your ultimate goal is to be selected as the best answer.

Once you are up and running with Yahoo Answers, it simply becomes a question of optimizing your efforts to ensure you get the best results possible.  Here are the key points you should keep in mind.

• When choosing which questions to answer, look for recently posted questions with either no answers or only one or two.
• Ensure that the URL you post in the source box contains the topic mentioned in the question: for example, if the question was about "acne cures", your URL might be something like "mysite.com/acne-cures.html".
• Try to include your niche keyword within the body of your answer; this is useful for search engine optimization.
• You can even include a backlink within the body of the answer (using an HTML a tag with an href attribute); but do this sparingly and make sure that it appears totally relevant to the topic being discussed.

Compared with many advertising techniques, using Yahoo Answers may seem like hard work. However, the rewards can be huge: it is not only the Yahoo search engine, which will pick up your answers (and links). Google can also index your answers; so be sure to answer as many questions as you can every day.