Quora is a wonderful way to engage with your potential users by asking questions about topics they might be interested in. So, if you are looking for a new way to market your site, and you haven’t tried it yet, you may want to consider using Quora.
Quora is a great way to build relationships with influencers and experts in your niche. If you want to become a thought leader or expert in your field, Quora can help you gain exposure and credibility.
Quora is an online question-and-answer community that allows users to ask questions and answer them. Users are able to create their own profile page where they can share information about themselves and their interests. Questions and answers are organized into topics which are then further broken down into subtopics. The site has over 300 million monthly active users.
With such a large user base, there are plenty of opportunities for SEO on this platform.
What Is Quora?
Quite simply, Quora is a question-and-answer site where anyone can ask questions or answer other people’s questions. The site has over 300 million registered members who post their answers anonymously.
It was founded in 2009 by two Stanford University students, Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever. They wanted to create a place where people could share knowledge and information freely.
Quora is a great way to get feedback from experts and gain new insights into topics you care about. If you want to start answering questions, there are plenty of opportunities to do so on this platform.
According to demandsage.com, here are some interesting statistics about the platform:
- Over 300 million unique users visit Quora every month.
- Quora had 100 million monthly users in 2016. The number rose to 190 million in 2017. And 300 million in 2022.
- Today, It is among the top 20 social media in the world based on the user count.
- Quora users engage in discussions of 400,000 topics.
- Quora users ask between 3000 to 5000 questions on the platform each day.
- According to estimates, each question on Quora receives an average of 6-7 responses, but this varies with factors such as the nature of the questions. If the topic is interesting, it may have over 5000 responses.
Clearly, Quora is a fantastic channel to market to, so you can help spread brand awareness along with content curation for your blog and more.
How Does Quora Actually Work?
Basically, anyone can ask questions and answer questions.
You don’t even need to sign up; you can simply browse the topics and find interesting questions. If you want to participate, you can either post your own answer or comment on someone else’s response.
The site is largely self-moderated in that good-quality answers get upvoted and poor answers are down voted. Additionally, there are moderators at Quora who review reported answers. They include employees or contractors.
There are also moderators that check out reports of abuse and spam. Users can file spam reports which works on both ends: moderators tackle the spam, while users also file the reports that moderators then act on if required.
Is It Possible to Link Back to Your Site on Quora At All?
Over on Search Engine Journal, Roger Montti explained the following from John Mueller on the validity of linking back to your site from Quora:
“The practice of using Quora for link building is essentially the same strategy for forum spamming and profile link spamming.
Forum Spam Tactic
Forum spamming is going to a community, answering questions and adding a link to your site for “more information.”
Some white hat SEOs view that as a win-win situation because you’re answering the question and linking to an article that has more information.
But most people who operate or moderate forum communities see this as spam.
Profile Link Building Tactic
Profile link builders are people who visit a forum, make a few useless posts and then disappear.
The way this low quality spam tactic works is that when a forum member makes a post, there’s a link back to their profile from their profile shown in the discussion. Then on their profile page there is a link back to whatever site that is being promoted.
As a moderator at WebmasterWorld for around 16 years, I can affirm that profile link building is easy to spot and aggressively acted upon by competent moderators.
Quora Link Building for Traffic
There are some who say that dropping (nofollow) links on Quora will result in massive traffic. It might result in a large amount of traffic but the traffic is highly likely to come from India.
Quora is highly popular in countries like India, Nepal, and Bangladesh.
That kind of traffic is not useful if the traffic you seek is from the United States, Italy, France, or UK.”
Although this might be considered a spammy link building tactic in nature, it may help increase other things that make it worth investing your time on this platform, including E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) and your overall authority.
How Quora Can Compliment Any SEO Pro’s Marketing Strategy
The thing that makes Quora unique is that it allows marketers to use it as part of a broader strategy. In fact, there are some things marketers can do with Quora that are impossible on most other platforms. Here are three examples:
Brand Awareness – One way to build brand awareness is to engage with influencers within your industry. You can find influencers on Quora by searching for topics related to your niche. Once you find someone interesting, you can start asking questions and engaging with them. If you’re lucky, they’ll mention your brand in their response.
Social Proof – Another great way to gain social proof is to post relevant questions on Quora. People love answering questions because it gives them something to talk about. When people see that lots of people are talking about your product, it helps convince them that it must be good.
Content Creation – Finally, another way to leverage Quora is to write articles based on the questions you receive. These articles can be used to promote your brand, attract traffic to your site, and provide value to your audience.
The following graph shows the overall search interest in Quora over time on Google Trends, since 2004.
Why Quora Might Be a Critical Part of Any SEO Pro’s Strategy
While many marketers use Quora as a way to promote themselves, there’s much more you can do with this powerful tool. Here are some ways you can leverage Quora to build your brand and increase traffic to your website.
Answer Questions About Your Industry
You’ve probably heard that answering questions on Quora helps improve your reputation and rank. This is true. However, it’s important to note that Quora doesn’t just help you gain credibility; it also gives you visibility. When someone asks a question about your industry, you’re able to answer it directly. You’ll show up in search results for keywords related to your niche. In addition, you’ll receive more visitors to your website because people are searching for information about your topic.
Build Relationships With Influencers
If you want to become an influencer yourself, start by asking questions. People love to talk about what they know. If you ask a relevant question, you might find someone willing to write a guest post for you. Or maybe they’ll even give you tips on how to make your product better. Either way, you’ll have built a relationship with another person who could potentially refer customers to your website.
Create Content
People love reading articles written by experts in their field. So why not write something yourself? Write blog posts, publish videos, or host webinars. You can also take advantage of Quora’s publishing tools. You can add images, video, polls, and more to your posts. Then, link out to your website.
Altos Agency talks about several examples of Quora marketing, which should give further context as to how this can be useful for your business:
What Can an SEO Pro Do With Quora?
There are plenty of things that an SEO pro can do with Quora to help increase results for an SEO campaign. Here are some ideas:
Find Keywords
Quora has over 300 million users. That means there are tons of potential keywords to target. Use Google Trends to determine which terms are trending right now. Then, look at the top questions asked about each keyword. Are any of these questions answered by your competitors? If so, you may want to consider targeting those keywords instead.
Promote Your Website
When someone searches for a particular keyword, Quora will display a list of questions and answers. The first result is usually the most popular one. Make sure your website appears near the top of the page. Also, try adding links to your website in the body of your answers. This will help drive traffic back to your site.
Increase Traffic To Your Site
As mentioned earlier, when someone searches for a certain keyword, Quora displays a list of questions and corresponding answers. One of the answers will likely be from your competitor. But if you answer the question, you’ll appear higher in search results than them. As a result, you’ll get more traffic to your website.
Answer Questions About Your Niche
If you’re interested in a specific topic, you should definitely answer questions related to it. For example, if you run a business selling custom-made shirts, you should probably answer questions like “How much does it cost to design a shirt?” or “Which fabric makes the best shirt?”. Not only will you gain knowledge about your niche, but you’ll also establish credibility within the community.
Wordstream talks about how SEO pros can take advantage of Quora in their blog post on the topic as well:
Why Is Quora Such a Great Site for SEO Pros to Take Advantage Of?
Quantcast estimates nearly 775,000 people access Quora each month in the U.S. alone, making it one of the largest social networks in the country. And according to Alexa, Quora ranks as the third most visited website in the United States. In other words, Quora is huge.
But it’s not just big numbers that make Quora attractive to marketers. There are several reasons why this platform is perfect for online marketing campaigns.
Engagement Rates
On average, Quora users spend around 30 minutes per visit. That means they’re spending time on your content. They’re actively engaging with your brand.
High Conversion Rate
According to DemandSage.com, when you advertise on Quora, Quora users convert at a rate of 4 folds higher than otherwise.
Targeted Audience
Quora users tend to be highly educated. According to Quantcast, 65 percent have college degrees. That means they’re likely to be receptive to your message.
Social Proof
People trust what others say. When someone asks a question on Quora, other users see it. They then click through to read the answer. This gives your company instant credibility.
Low Cost
It costs nothing to create a profile on Quora. All you need is a unique username. From there, you can start answering questions and building authority.
Creating an Optimal Quora Profile
Whenever you answer a question, there is a small part of your bio that’s shown near the top of your answer. This can help with branding quite significantly. You want to include your name, email address, and any relevant information.
Also, users can have bios that are topic-specific. It’s possible to mention your expertise on social media when answering questions, or explaining that you have engineering skills when you are answering a question about software engineering, for example.
You want to mention your brand as close to the beginning as possible. This way, you can make the most of that 50 character space.
This is also a great way to enhance some of your prowess and help show that you are indeed an expert about what you are discussing.
How to Track Topics on Quora By Using Notifications
One of Quora’s greatest uses extends to market research that’s more fun than the typical market research you might deal with.
The reasoning behind this is because it allows you to figure out what your audience is talking about, and find out the questions that people are asking within your niche.
This is a major benefit to your marketing strategy because then you can tailor your topics to your target audience, without worrying about whether you’re getting that targeting right.
To track topics with notifications, you can have all of these questions and answers emailed to you every day.
To get started, simply select the topics that appear when you search for them in Quora’s search box. This allows you to have specific topics that you follow just on Quora.
Quora will give you a list of autocomplete suggestions. When it does, and you click to go to a page about that topic, you will see even more related topics you can follow down the side of your screen.
This is a great way to do topic research and come up with questions that you can answer as a result.
This is how you can find notifications in Quora:
Find the Best Questions You Will Want to Have Answers For
Although you can answer just about any question you’d like on Quora, there are more strategic ways to answer questions that people are searching for.
You might want to consider the following:
Do a search for your chosen topic. By doing this first, you can help uncover the questions that you should be targeting more significantly.
If you don’t know where to begin, you can use the search bar at the top of the site.
Once you’ve done this, look for the questions that have been asked recently. These are usually the ones that are most popular and therefore the best ones to answer.
Look for questions that have already been answered by other experts. If they haven’t, ask them yourself!
Look for questions that are unanswered. There may be something interesting going on here that you could learn from.
Ask yourself if you would enjoy answering this question. If so, you’ll probably enjoy answering it too.
Make sure you read through the comments before answering. They often contain valuable information that you can add to your answer.
Find threads that have many upvotes. An upvote is Quora’s signal that a thread is of significantly high quality. At least, high quality enough to garner that many upvotes. When it comes to an answer’s popularity, it’s possible to achieve many thousands of views per day as a result.
Answer a Question Using Expertise and Authority About Your Niche
Expertise and influence are usually gained on Quora by spreading your knowledge and answering people’s questions about your niche.
The immediate benefit of being on Quora is that, as an SEO pro, this includes being seen as an expert on a certain topic.
By answering questions, providing significant value, and ensuring complete responses that help Quora’s users, you will find that your expertise and influence on the platform will soar.
What makes answers great on Quora?
One source, the CrazyEgg blog, explains that answers that use sources, references, and statistics are excellent answers. You want to provide a good, but short, answer to your audience’s questions that also links to an outside resource.
Use Questions From Your Blog as the Basis of Your Strategy (and Link Back to Your Answer)
This is a part of repurposing your content. And this is something that can make your blog’s posts provide significant value for a long time after they have been published.
For example: let’s say that you wrote an article that had many answers that addressed a common question, or a problem that your users have.
What you can do is dig out that blog post, curate the questions you answered, and find those questions (or their equivalents) on Quora.
Then, you can share answers to these questions on Quora, in which you can include a link back to your blog post which has even more complete details on the topic.
Use Quora to Supplement Your Link Building Efforts
Although links on Quora are nofollowed, they can still supplement your link building efforts by being included in your strategy.
As a supplement, they shouldn’t be considered as your main link building strategy because of the nofollow effect.
However, they can be considered a traffic source because of the traffic that can go back to your site from Quora as a result.
When do you plan on working with Quora as part of your next SEO project?
