What is Quora and Why Should SEOs Care? by @thewillrobins

Quora is a Q&A site where anyone can ask a question and get answers. Here’s how you can use it to drive traffic to your site, build your authority on topics, and even get some SEO benefits.

What Is Quora?

Quora was co-founded in 2009 by Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever, both formerly of Facebook. Initially, it was mostly being used by people familiar with the Silicon Valley scene.

By December 2010, after a few news stories recognized more and more high profile people, like Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, Foursquare director of business development Tristan Walker, Pandora Radio founder Tim Westergren, and even Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, use of the site grew exponentially.

Today, Quora is actually an awesome hangout. Anyone can ask a question and people answer. It is also a mega website. Quora gets around 100 million monthly visitors.

Why is it cool? Let me give you a few examples. You will want to bookmark these and follow them.

The Most Surreal Places to Visit

This thread goes through the best places in the world to visit. It provides pictures and gives users insight. This thread is awesome because of the user-generated content.

Realistic Ways To Get Rich in 5 Years

We all want money. Who wouldn’t want a never ending bank account? This perfect question got answered by millionaires, CEOs, and TIME people of the year. It walks through business to affiliate marketing.

What can I learn/know right now in 10 minutes that will be useful for the rest of my life?

This question got more than 2,000 responses. Some of the responses were small life hacks to find out what Google knows about you.

As you can tell, Quora attracts a wide audience. It also has a ton of information already contained in its enormous website.

Why Should You Care About Quora?

Well, that actually leads to a more specific question: is Quora good for SEO?

If we’re asking that question, well, it only makes sense to ask Quora. Is Quora good for SEO?

Unfortunately, like most SEO questions, it came down to opinion.

Can I use Quora to help rank my website? This was still a debate over the facts.

Let’s look at the facts.

Quora’s Weird SEO Benefits

Links from Quora are nofollow. While a nofollow link may not sound like something worth the effort, you would be wrong. Here’s why.

Google & Bing Show Quora Results

Some Google and Bing searches show Quora’s answers in the first search position. Quora is always growing and gaining more authority.

Google grabs the info and displays the answer with a small link. Bing showcases the link and information.

So if you write a great answer and it gets upvoted, you’re getting traffic to that post. If that post then has a link to your content, you are gaining exposure. Does that help SEO?

Follow Google Engineers and Learn the Dirt

There are former Google engineers that talk about their time at Google.

There are of course the present Google engineers that have answers to questions on Quora. You can even invite them to answer your questions.

Interested in the “history” of search engine marketing? Then follow this guy.

Quora Isn’t Bad for SEO

Figuring out that Quora doesn’t actually offer a ton of SEO value was a bummer. It seems like such a happening place.

So I decided to dig deeper and look at why so many marketers are using Quora.

Is There Value in Quora Other Than SEO?

SEO is incredibly valuable, but also incredibly competitive. You can’t just rely on people finding your brand or business via a Google search.

That’s why marketers are using Quora to build their authority and expertise on a variety of subjects. Quora gives you access to 100 million visitors per month, and you can turn some of those users into new visitors and even conversions.

Your customers are also on Quora. And they may be asking questions about your products or services.

Providing great answers to questions will increase your authority and popularity, which will improve your findability in search engines. In addition, you can turn insights from others in your industry, or even your own answers, into content that your target audience will be interested in.

Quora Is a Great Traffic Strategy

In this post, Ryan Stewart talked through how he drove more than 1,500 visitors to his site using Quora. He called it growth hacking – although his tactics weren’t entirely on the up and up.

He logged into Quora, found topics around his blog, then posted comments that had links back to his site. Pretty standard, right? But then he then bought upvotes (he even announced that he had done so on his blog). Be warned: this is spam. Quora will ban any accounts doing this.

If he would have interacted on Quora and gained upvotes in a natural fashion it would have been fine.

Quora has long-term value. Stay consistent and keep interacting. The upvotes will happen.

A Legit Case Study

There are plenty of case studies out there on generating traffic from Quora. Take a minute and search for them. They will give you in-depth information on how various people achieved it. This one covers a few.

Imran Esmail has achieved almost a million and a half views on his answers. He did this by posting 343 answers. That is legit!

How Do You Drive Traffic From Quora?

Here is a simple checklist to drive traffic from Quora:

1. Create a stunning profile. Show that you are an authority and stand out.
2. Find questions that have lots of views and followers.
3. Craft your answers like a great article. Tell a cool story and show that you know the subject in depth.
4. Find ways to go visual. Insert pictures or videos.
5. Drop a link to another piece of content that covers the subject more in depth.
6. Stay consistent.

Summary

Quora is a long-term traffic strategy. Those who are spending time answering questions on Quora are reaping the benefits.

Find ways to have everyone on your team create a constant and consistent presence on Quora. There are tons of visitors to your offers to show for it.

Use Quora to drive more traffic to your site and get a few SEO benefits from it as well.

Image Credits

Featured Image: DepositPhotos
Screenshots by Will Robins. Taken April and May 2017.

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Author: Will Robins

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