Utilizing Yahoo! Answers to Increase Conversions

According to Robert Half, you need to “ask the right questions if you’re to find the right answers.” This is a pivotal thought process for a unique interactive marketing tactic that can be used as part of an SEO campaign. People ask questions to serve the natural human characteristic of curiosity. Curiosity can help people feel more attuned to what is going on around them or provide self-satisfaction by fulfilling the thirst for knowledge. Many people may already know the answers to the questions they ask, but hearing answers from those they trust can greatly sway the belief, thoughts and actions. Naturally, as people gain insight from those around them that they trust about a brand or services, this can supersede or, in some cases, enforce the traditional brand marketing of a company. That is where SEO steps in.

Yahoo! Answers was designed to allow users to interact with one another to ask questions and receive answers. Once answers are received, people are able to vote on how informative and “correctly” the answers are tailored to the question. One benefit of Yahoo! Answers is the capability to accumulate points based on the success of your asking or answering of questions. This secondary aspect of Yahoo! Answers is almost as important as the first, from an SEO perspective. By building up this points reputation, the asker crowd begins to understand your dedication and success to the process. As you accumulate points, there are a number of levels you can reach. Certain levels unlock the ability to reference your answers with links, which, naturally, are seen and evaluated by search engines. This is one basis for utilizing Yahoo! Answers with an SEO and interactive marketing mindset. Conversions are the other facet of Yahoo! Answers that have recently been surfacing throughout these answering endeavors.

Clients want to see return on investment, and what better way to provide that than to show them the products they sold or tuition they made from Yahoo! Answers. Recently, there has been data coming from increased inquiry generation, increased revenue conversion and enhanced brand marketing efforts. By utilizing Yahoo! Answers as part of a strategic SEO or internet marketing campaign, clients have been showing positive results from an ROI perspective and increased search engine performance through linkbuilding authority, highly targeted and relevant traffic increases, and increased keyword performance in the search results. There are many other resources out there that can be used in addition to Yahoo! Answers, such as HubPages, Answers.com, LinkedIn Answers, Facebook Questions and Quora. Each of these platforms provides different target markets, ranking variables, scoring metrics and topics of questions, but can be utilized in the same manner.

Next time you are looking for a way to reach out to your target demographic, just think: would it not be easier to just let them come to you with questions so you can provide the answers they are looking for?