There are websites that provide questions and answers for a huge variety of subjects. This is a goldmine of information just waiting to be used.

A user on one of these Question and Answer web sites can submit a “question” on a particular subject and other users of the Question and Answer web site can provide answers to it and the answers can be voted on (and then sorted by) relevance (more votes meaning more relevance). All the responses can be viewed online.

These Question and Answer web sites can generate you great amounts of traffic if you can answer questions in your area of expertise (it goes without saying that you need to ensure that your answering Questions that are related to your particular niche on the Internet).

Yahoo have a Question and Answer website that offers a complete question and answer service and it’s very useful to use to get your name out there and known to people.

You do certainly need to be careful about what you post. Don’t expect to be able to just post a URL and get masses of traffic, you will find your “answer” voted down or even removed if you do this.

As I have mentioned numerous times, providing great quality and relevant content will be far more valuable. Actually helping people out (by answering their question) will show you to be an “expert” in your market in no time flat.

The rules generally specify no “soliciting”, so answer the question and help someone out, with a detailed answer and then add a reference to your website for people to follow up for more information.

The other great reason to use Question and Answer sites (particularly Yahoo given that Google is not accepting new questions and answers) is that lots of websites syndicate the questions and answers for content on their website.

As I mentioned above, Questions and Answers can also appear in search engine results. Of course the other benefit is that users of the question and answer sites themselves will get to your website from reading your responses.

Personally in my experience I treat the answering of questions as building up a presence on the Internet rather than a source of huge traffic to my websites, however it is certainly something that should not be ignored.

With that said, I believe it can be a great “return on investment” where for a relatively small amount of time invested (to answer questions) you can get a steady trickle of web traffic.

A user on one of these Question and Answer web sites can submit a “question” on a particular subject and other users of the Question and Answer web site can provide answers to it and the answers can be voted on (and then sorted by) relevance (more votes meaning more relevance). All the responses can be viewed online.

These Question and Answer web sites can generate you great amounts of traffic if you can answer questions in your area of expertise (it goes without saying that you need to ensure that your answering Questions that are related to your particular niche on the Internet).

Google had a question and answer site that can still be viewed, but that is no longer accepting questions (so you wont be able to answer any questions on that site until it’s re-opened – At the time I was writing this chapter there was still no ETA on when or indeed if this will happen).

Fortunately there are other alternatives. Yahoo have a Question and Answer website that offers a complete question and answer service and it’s very useful to use to get your name out there and known to people.

You do certainly need to be careful about what you post. Don’t expect to be able to just post a URL and get masses of traffic, you will find your “answer” voted down or even removed if you do this.

As I have mentioned numerous times, providing great quality and relevant content will be far more valuable. Actually helping people out (by answering their question) will show you to be an “expert” in your market in no time flat.

The rules generally specify no “soliciting”, so answer the question and help someone out, with a detailed answer and then add a reference to your website for people to follow up for more information.

Don’t try and forward to a sales page! It’s likely your answer will be deleted!

The other great reason to use Question and Answer sites (particularly Yahoo given that Google is not accepting new questions and answers) is that lots of websites syndicate the questions and answers for content on their website.

I’ve seen automated software that will actually allow you to automatically seed a new forum you setup by automatically providing usernames, posts (questions and answers). Guess where they often get their content?

Yes you guessed it from these type of sites, so this is a way for you to get more references in search engine results and links to your website.

Just to make it clear what happens. You post an answer to a question on a web site.

This site (and your answer) will eventually get indexed by the search engines, and your website will have a link from a great resource (the question and answer web-site).

Over time other web sites may put your posts onto their web-sites, giving you more links. Fantastic!

As I mentioned above, Questions and Answers can also appear in search engine results.

Of course the other benefit is that users of the question and answer sites themselves will get to your website from reading your responses.

Personally in my experience I treat the answering of questions as building up a presence on the Internet rather than a source of huge traffic to my websites, however it is certainly something that should not be ignored.

With that said, I believe it can be a great “return on investment” where for a relatively small amount of time invested (to answer questions) you can get a steady trickle of web traffic.

Along a similar vein to Questions and Answer sites, how-to sites such as eHow are a great way to get your name out there.

These sites give you just that a “how-to” do something on a huge range of subjects. The idea here is that you become an expert by writing the “how-to” which will bring people to your website.

Some unscrupulous people will both post questions and answer themselves in Questions and Answers and “how-to” web sites. Make no mistake you will eventually get caught out doing this (and let’s face it, it’s bad karma, right?).

These type of web-sites are getting better all the time in finding out about these types of breaches. Just stick to helping out people as much as possible in your given niche and building up a strong name as an expert in your particular area of expertise.

I hope you enjoyed this lesson, I’ll be back in a few days with the next one.