Yahoo Answers: A Valuable Tool for Increasing Blog Traffic and Improving SEO

Online entrepeneurs who seek to improve their web presence will find a valuable ally in a free service offered by Yahoo: Yahoo Answers. In a virtual world where all hits are equal, a page view coming from a 13-year-old girl trying to see if the world thinks that she is pretty is just as important as one from a Harvard professor Googling on his lunch break. Wherever page views come from and whoever is viewing content, the most important thing for a blogger or freelance writer is that page views continue to come in and increase. Each additional tool in the writer's arsenal offers a unique method of generating page views, and getting views from a variety of different sources helps to increase site page rank. To that end, combining the use of Yahoo Answers with Twitter causes a wider audience to click on your links, enhancing your potential productivity and earnings.

Yahoo Answers, like Twitter, is very easy to operate and can deliver results rapidly. Unlike Twitter, however, Yahoo Answers can continue to provide hits years after they are posted. The posts can always be found in Google and other search engine searches, and there is a considerable cadre of users searching for answers to their questions, even if the answers are to archived questions. Thus, generating a significant presence on Yahoo Answers can provide a big boost to an online business, blog, or writer.

In Yahoo Answers, users ask questions, to which other users can then present their answers. The entire system operates on points: each question that you ask takes away from your points total, while each answer you provide adds to your points total. Thus, Yahoo has ensured there will always be many more answers than there will be questions. The user who asked the question can then decide who provided the best answer, and choosing a best answerer gives that user a points bonus. Other than providing the ability to ask more questions, points also allow the user to "level up," and this is where things become important for online freelancers and bloggers. In the first level, links can be posted, but the hyperlinks will be stripped off in the postings. You must make it to level 2 in Answers before you get hyperlinking ability. This requires answering between 20 and 40 questions (depending on the number of Answers chosen as best answers). Once you do receive hyperlinks, however, all of your old posts are immediately converted to hyperlinks if you have added web addresses in them. Other privileges include the number of questions that you are allowed to ask or answer each day, and subsequent levels increase these amounts.

If you want to increase traffic to your blog, article, or site, then, simply find a question on Yahoo that you have already written an answer for, then post some links to articles or sites that apply to that question. Yahoo Answers is huge, and if you've written about it, somebody is probably asking about it. Spending 30-60 seconds to craft a meaningful response with a hyperlink to a source (your source) gives you a perhaps 10 percent higher chance of getting chosen as a best answer. But, this doesn't matter, because answers get exposure no matter what.

Users must have a Yahoo e-mail address and create a Yahoo Answers profile to sign up, but this takes mere moments and you can be answering in little time at all. The profile offers another opportunity to post some links and tell about youself. The free service of Yahoo Answers provides a different method of generating backlinks and increasing web traffic. Each additional link posted on Answers means another backlink for Google to index and another Search Engine Optimization (SEO) boost.

Personal experience: I answered perhaps 10-15 questions about timing belts and posted my Honda Timing Belt article in the source section. By the end of last month, my Honda article multiplied its earnings by 10 from the previous month and earned more than twice the next-highest earning article ($2.04 over the month). It does take some time and patience, but it works.