14 replies to this topic

[Andy1342]

Are links from Yahoo Answers worth having as far as Google goes? [I'm not interested in ranking higher in Yahoo].

I'm an expert in my subject and it's easy to give an answer with a legitimate link to "source" or "further information." One of my competitors, who is very SEO savvy, has done this. She has some 200+ answers with one or two links in them.

However, when I look at her sites in Yahoo Site Explorer, I only find maybe 30 or 40 of those links. Is she wasting her time? Or are even 40 links worth having?

Obviously the basic question is "should I do this". But spinoff questions include whether Yahoo Site Explorer picks up all such links, whether there is any better way to check links than Y.S.E., whether Google picks up the same links and whether it values them.

I hope this works because I can do it easily. But I don't want to waste me time.

I have searched the forum for previous answers, but didn't find any - "Yahoo answers" is not an easy phrase to search for. Hope I didn't miss something.

Many thanks

Andy

[Michael Martinez]

Numerous people have reported receiving qualified, converting traffic (without offering any proof) in multiple blogs and forums from these types of resources. Whether they help with search engine rankings should, in my opinion, be a secondary consideration if they are really driving qualified, converting traffic.

[PhilipSEO]

Yahoo Answers links are nofollow and therefore have zero SEO impact.

However, quality answers to relevant questions can still bring you targeted traffic.

[Andy1342]

Yahoo Answers links are nofollow and therefore have zero SEO impact.

However, quality answers to relevant questions can still bring you targeted traffic.

Dear Phillip,
Thank you for this reply! I somehow missed the notification at the time, but better late than never.
Regards

Andy

[Pooky]

Yahoo Answers links are nofollow and therefore have zero SEO impact.

However, quality answers to relevant questions can still bring you targeted traffic.

Hi Phil,

Recently Google has paid a lot of attention to links from social sites such as Twitter in its rankings. Sites that have a lot of attention on social media sites seem to do better in the rankings (I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post a link to this research but it's on SEO Moz). That being the case, do you think that no follow links really have no SEO impact? As I think Twitter links are no follow.

[Jill]

Sites that have a lot of attention on social media sites seem to do better in the rankings (I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post a link to this research but it's on SEO Moz).

SEOMoz showed that URLs that were shared a lot on Facebook also seemed to rank highly in Google. i.e., there was a correlation. This does not mean that it was the FB shares that caused the high rankings anymore than it means that the high rankings caused lots of FB shares.

To me, it simply means that good content will be recognized by Google and also be shared by people. Which is the definition of good content anyway, no?

[Michael Martinez]

People have been bamboozled by the correlation studies again. There is some interesting stuff in the SEOmoz data but no one is really talking about it.

Two correlated trends can have a shared cause without either being the cause of the other and Jill's point is a great example of that: really good Websites (or at least sites that are better than the ones listed below them in search results) can reap benefits from multiple sources or channels. That doesn't mean the channels are intermingled to the point where one influences the other.

[ABAR]

can't people make scripts that spam social media sites and create a ton of links to a particular page?

I think this is a terrible idea and absolutely not an SEO strategy. But just following that line of logic. How can good make sites come up better in search engines because they have a lot of links from social media? It seems like if that really worked... spammers would be salivating to post thousands of links to their sites on openly editable social media.

[chrishirst]

The SEOMOZ pseudo scientific, deductive reasoning (x=y therefore y must be a fish) really does bug me, and the biggest problem is that the Indlish speaking "experts" spread it far and wide as "fact". Half of what they come up with doesn't even qualify as "proof of concept".

When they stop taking an effect, then trying to prove what causes it might be the time when their "research" could be taken seriously!

[Pooky]

Thanks guys, I hadn't really thought about it this way. I guess good quality content would have a lot of shares anyway.

[Michael Martinez]

In looking at some other data sources, I do see what appears to be a high correlation between Twitter/Facebook sharing and traffic arriving at specific pages. The correlation doesn't imply that these links on Twitter and Facebook are helping with rankings but they do indicate that when a lot of natural attention is directed at an article from social media the article tends to receive more traffic.

Search Engine Watch carried an article today attributing to Twitter President of Global Revenue Adam Bain the assertion that "80% of user engagement with a tweet is clicking on a a link contained inside (with the remaining being re-tweeting or responding to a tweet)."

This corroborates the data we're seeing and suggests that social media has a huge impact on traffic (but some Websites will benefit from social media more than others, so we cannot conclude that social media is helping all sites).

You have to take all these different sources together and look for both agreement and conflict among the various signals.

[goadventure]

I do think that yahoo answers links count and are of good value, especially for yahoo rankings. As yahoo give a few more points to yahoo related links.

You don't just want yahoo answer links however, you want variety...I'd say max one for each page. Getting 1000 links from the same domain to the same page is wasting 999 links.

Yahoo Answers I would imagine would get indexed relatively fast... so good to go in my opinion.

Just do not mistake this for a one stop back-linking solution, get some variety of domains linking to you.

[chrishirst]

I'd be surprised if any search engine gave any "value" to links in the spam filled junk hole that Yahoo! answers has become.

It's the Internet equivalent of the attic or the cupboard under the stairs. You open the door to put something in there and hope that nothing falls out or escapes.

[Jill]

I'd be surprised if any search engine gave any "value" to links in the spam filled junk hole that Yahoo! answers has become.

One would certainly hope not!

[linkvoodoo]

Yahoo Answers doesn't carry a whole lot of juice with Google, but it does with a few other search engines, so it may be a worthwhile investment of your time, depending on what terms and what engines you're trying to build up on. I've actually done a comparison of Google and Bing that touched on this very topic. If you go to www.linkbuildr.com/google-vs-bing-round-2-product-search and scroll down to the screencaps of search engine results, you can compare the results of both Google and Bing with regards to one of my e-stores. Google seems to more or less disregard Yahoo Answers entirely (perhaps because it's a competing site), while Bing actually has a Yahoo Answers result IN THE TOP FIVE. That's a huge endorsement, and while Bing isn't exactly the go-to search engine of choice for most people, it can still produce traffic.

The other thing you may want to think about for Yahoo Answers is, rather than SEO, raw customer conversions. If the question you're answering is common enough, and the answer you provide includes a link which people asking that question would legitimately want to click on, then odds are you will get some sincere, high-quality traffic from it. These are exactly the kind of people who, theoretically, will be wanting to buy the product or service you are offering.


Beyond that, when it comes to SEO, the rule of thumb is to always have your eggs in more than one basket. If you can afford the time and labour to build links into Yahoo Answers, by all means, go for it; but don't neglect other, more important sources (legitimate content, large site link swaps, blog linkbait etc.) to do so.