Marketing with “Yahoo Answers”

Did you know that Yahoo Answers is the #2 reference site on the internet? It’s right behind Wikipedia, and yet, it is often overlooked by most as part of an overall internet marketing plan. However, because of its high traffic, it deserves serious consideration.

If you aren’t familiar with it, Yahoo Answers is a place where people can ask a question about any topic and people can post replies. The person who asked the question chooses the best answer and that answer is featured at the top.

What’s great about it is that you can include one or more links in your answer – as long as they are justified, provide good value and honestly help to answer the question. And because so many of the users don’t give well-written, thoughtful answers, it’s pretty easy for your answers to stand out and get chosen as the top answer.

Yahoo Answers isn’t appropriate for every niche. It works best for more mainstream topics and niches. Topics like food, exercise, diet, video games are very popular. You’ll have to spend time browsing the questions in the categories that apply to your niche. Don’t worry about wasting your time because you’ll quickly find out if Yahoo Answers is appropriate for you.

As soon as you visit their site and read the questions and answers posted there, you’ll notice that most “Yahoo answers” users are pretty young. So a good authoritative answer will most likely get selected to be the featured one.

One great tactic to follow is to search the Yahoo search engine for your keywords. If a Yahoo Answer question pops up on page one of the search results you should take the time to answer that question. If the question is already ranked, it means that it’s already getting traffic… and you can easily funnel that traffic to your site simply by answering that question.

It’s not always a good idea to include a link to your site in the answers. With a little creativity you can still funnel the traffic to your money-pages without being obvious (try linking to Squidoo lenses, Hubpages or even YouTube videos you have created).

Use other people’s links from time to time. You don’t want to be perceived as a spammer. As with all social media, quality content matters. If you use Yahoo Answers regularly you’ll have plenty of opportunities to use your own link and funnel traffic to your sites.

Another way to promote goodwill is to vote for other people’s answers if you think they were better than your own. If you add your real name to your posts this will help build trust and make it less likely that you will be perceived as a spammer.

Yahoo Answers has a social networking feature. When you answer someone’s question you should add them as a friend. Also add the people who regularly answer questions in your niche.

Celebrities and politicians use Yahoo Answers. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have used Yahoo Answers. Obama asked the question, “How can we engage more people in the democratic process?” and received more than 3000 replies. Clinton asked Americans how they would improve health care in the United States and more than 25,000 people answered.

Would it be possible to generate this kind of repsonse in such a short period of time on any other social network platform? I don’t think so. So don’t overlook the power of Yahoo Answers.