I posted about using Yahoo Answers for free niche content in a previous post but didn’t go into much detail.
As you’ll probably already know, Yahoo Answers is a community site where people ask and answer questions. The site itself is very popular, has a Google Page Rank of 7 and pages are featured in the yahoo search engine.
Although many people have found the quality of answers in Yahoo to be lower than other sites, I still use it for free content and traffic. Before I show you my method, here’s a comment from alexa reviews on Yahoo Answers that I found amusing:
“I’ve been to a lot of QA sites, and this one is by far the worst. It’s mostly comprised of teenagers engaging in popularity contests, and people that hate everything that moves besides themselves, harassing everyone they can. You will seldom find a serious question here, and you will even more seldom find a serious answer to a serious question. It seems most folks are there to make points, not answer questions. On the up side, the format is good, and the interface is easy to get a grasp on, but with all of that ease, there are no serious questions to be found.”
Despite the above comment, there ARE some good answers on the site (for example, Health related topics). Getting content from Yahoo Answers is easy. Just search for the niche you want info on then copy and paste the best answer to edit and place on your site. Simple.
You can also use your site to get targetted traffic from Yahoo Answers because getting your link on there is also pretty easy. There are two ways to do this, the first way is to search and answer questions by other people and the other is to make 2 accounts and ask and answer your own question.
If you are searching for other people’s questions, you’ll need to use the advanced search feature to search for open questions because you will not be able to post on resolved ones.
However, some naughty people open 2 accounts to answer their own questions. The reason for this is that when someone searches for your keyword on yahoo answers, your answer will be on the first page of results which means more traffic.
These people would:
- Make 2 accounts Yahoo Accounts
- Ask a question (and sure their keyword is in their title and body)
- Answer their own question with an in-depth and relevant answer
- Include their link as the source
- Wait 24hrs then choose their own answer as the best answer.
There’s actually a quick and easy way to get your new blog / websites indexed into search engines with high PR backlinks which will generate you an abundance of free web traffic.
I’m not talking about “social bookmarking” or “Tag and Ping” (although they are also effective). This method is simple and if you’re not already doing it, you should be.
Writing articles is a free method of generating hundreds of backlinks to your site which will get your new site indexed into all search engines super-fast. All you need to do is write a good quality article and then put a link to your site in the author’s resource box.
After you submit your articles to article directories, publishers will begin picking up your article and start publishing them on their site (with your link). Their visitors will see your link and go to your site. You’ll get a ton of free traffic and make some money in the process (adsense and affiliate products?).
I’ve been writing and submitting articles for new sites and the results have been great. My sites get indexed quickly and I get some good traffic which allows to dominate low competition niches 
Here are my tips for article writing:
- Write quality content related to your site
- Make sure your article has a good headline and include keyword in headline
- Include 2 links to your site in the author’s resource box
- The first link should be linked with anchor text that you are trying to rank for in search engines. For example, You have a flower arranging site, so you’re first anchor link text should be “flower arranging” because this is what people will type into search engines to find your site.
- Your second link should be your website address. The reason for this is because anchor text variation is good for SEO as it makes your links look more natural.
Your author’s resource box could look something like:
“To learn more about Flower Arranging (link this text), visit John Smiths site: http://www.FlowerArrangingTips.com “
The only disadvantage of submitting articles is that after you’ve written them, you have to go to article directories and submit them all individually. Some people would rather avoid this monotonous task (me too).
The way I submit articles is by using an article distribution service. Article Marketer is an article distribution service that will distribute your articles automatically to over 42,087 people in 528 article announcement directories and forums. All I do is write and submit my article once!
Reading and learning about Internet Marketing is helpful, however, an often overlooked part of marketing is action. If you do not take action, you won’t get anywhere with Internet Marketing.
You must take action now, if you are not already doing so. Don’t be afraid of failure and do something that could contribute to your streams of income today!
Even if you have a full time job, I’m sure you can find just one hour per day to contribute to your Internet Marketing. These hours will mount up and you’ll have a successful venture before you know it (whether it be an AdSense site, Affiliate landing pages, or anything else).
I currently do around 3 hours of Internet marketing per day. However, 2 of those hours are spent checking stats, payments and replying to emails. I actually only spend 1 hour per day doing solid Internet Marketing work. Here’s an example of what you could do in one week using just one hour each day:
Day 1: Find And Research A Niche
Finding profitable niches shouldn’t take you that long. There are many ways to do this depending on the method you want to monetise a niche (whether it be AdSense, selling ebooks through PPC, etc). If my aim was to build an AdSense site then I’d look for content that was already available on the Internet. I’d find and make a list of potential niches and do some research into each niche, analysing things such as search volume and competition to determine which niche would be easiest to break into.
Day 2: Go To Blogger And Make A Blog (with AdSense and /or affiliate links)
We’re going to dive straight into a niche blog using the quickest and cheapest method. On day 2, I’d go to blogger and set up a blog. I’d use one of their pre-made templates and add AdSense onto the blog and possibly an affiliate banner/link. The blog would have the niche keyword in the address, title, headings and body of the text. I’d make a first post detailing what the blog is going to be about and ping it via Pingoat.
Day 3: Making Another Post And Tracking Traffic
I’d make another post to the blog and ping it. Then I’d head over to StatCounter to get a free traffic counter and add it to my blog. We’ll need this to analyse where our traffic is coming from and what keywords they are using to arrive at our sites.
Day 4: Write And Distribute An Article (automatic distribution?)
We’ve now got our blog set up but it may not be indexed into search engines yet. I’d grab one of our previous blog posts on our niche blog, rewrite and expand on it to submit to article directories. Again, I’d make another post to our blog and ping it.
Day 5: Social Bookmarking sites
Now that we’ve got some content on our sites, it’s time to get some traffic and links. The quickest way to get links is by using social bookmarking sites such as furl, spurl and blogmarks. Post content and ping your blog again.
Day 6: Adding An Opt-In box
You should be seeing a trickle of traffic to your sites now (look at statcounter) and you should have made some money via AdSense or affiliate links. At the very least, you should have one AdSense click. The next step, is to add an opt-in box onto your blog. This will allow you to “keep” your traffic so that you can send them to any page or affiliate link on demand. Just add one autoresponder message saying “Thanks for signing up” or something similar and include a link back to your blog.
Day 7: Adding More Autoresponder Messages
I’d add about 5 more messages to my autoresponder directing people to new and previous blog posts. I’d also review an ebook and include the affiliate link in one of the messages. This will recycle your traffic and increase your earnings from each signup.
The steps above should only take one hour each day. As you can see, these hours mount up and within a week you’d have your own automatic money-machine. The above is just a quick example of what one hour per day can achieve…..take action now!
A good quality hosting partner will provide sufficient resources to provide all users with suitable web space, bandwidth, reliability, security, technical support and the latest available technologies. A poor quality hosting partner will offer a cheap rate to entice you to sign up with them and will then proceed to cram as many websites as possible onto each single server and not provide sufficient equipment and technical expertise. This results in constant reliability and performance issues.
Geographic targeting is also a key element when choosing your hosting partner as the location of your hosting partner is a vital clue used by the major search engines to determine the target market of your website. If the target market of a website is the United States then it is of critical importance that the website is hosted in the United States. Similarly if the target market is India then the website must be hosted in India.
Another important aspect is the IP address of your website and more importantly, if there are other websites sharing your IP address that have been blacklisted by the major search engines they could also have a negative impact on how your website will be viewed. A dedicated hosting plan can be expensive and only necessary for a hugely successful website. However, a dedicated IP address on your shared hosting account can be an effective tool for you to convince the search engines of your website’s validity and character.
Finally consider the technologies supported by your hosting partner and the website building tools they will provide you with. As standard you can expect to be provided with access to the latest versions of PHP, MySQL databases, FTP clients, blogging software, ecommerce solutions, .htaccess access and visitor statistics as a minimum. If these technologies are not available then you should consider searching for alternative hosting partner that will provide better value services for your money.
The bottom line is that selecting a reputable hosting partner should amount to more than a comparison of prices and selection of the cheapest option. Consult with business acquaintances to find reputable hosting companies and consult local technology forums for further insight.
When speaking with perspective hosting partners ask lots of questions such as the technology they support, well known websites they already host, what level of support they provide as standard. While researching a couple of different hosting options can be time consuming it is a worthwhile exercise and will ensure you get your website implementation and promotion off to the best possible start.
Your choice of domain name cannot be overstated and is one of the most essential elements of building a successful website and managing a successful SEO campaign. By choosing the right domain you are automatically creating company and brand awareness online and boosting the likelihood of remembrance amongst your online visitors. Elements to consider when choosing your domain name:
- Unique Domain Name - choose a unique website domain to avoid have your website confused with existing websites or existing companies or brands.
- Include Keywords if Possible - have the top keywords for your domain to hand when choosing the domain. These keywords can be paired with prefixes and suffixes to create a high quality domain name and enable visitors to instantly identify what your website offers. For example if your business offers computer services in New York then the domain name www.newyorkcomputerservices.com is a great domain name.
- .com .com .com – . com is the most widely used domain extension and is (generally) automatically expected by online users. The only time to avoid a .com domain is if your website is restricted to a country and the country extension such as .co.uk (United Kingdom) or .au (Australia) or .ie (Ireland) can be used. Even in such instances it is recommended to register the .com name also so as not to restrict possible future online growth and expansion.
- Easy to Spell – ensure your domain is easy to spell to ensure visitors can find your site where they expect to find it.
- Easy to Remember – the easier your domain name is to remember the higher the likelihood of visitors returned directly and also promoting your website to others. Sounds obvious but is often ignored!
- Easy to Type – how many times have you mistakenly typed www.gooogle.com or www.googe.com instead of www.google.com? Avoid commonly mistyped letters such as “q”, “x” and “c” where possible to ensure visitors can find you as easily as possible.
- The Shorter the Better – the shorter the domain name the better it looks and is easier to remember, spell and type.
- Exclude Hyphens or Numbers -hyphens and numbers make a domain harder to remember, harder to type and expose a greater risk to visitors getting lost when trying to find your website. On top of this they just look plain ugly!
Consider all elements and then choose the domain name you are most comfortable with based on the domains available.
