An Alternative to SEO

Publishing your well drafted content but not receiving any traffic can be tiring. It gives you the feeling that no one listens. It creates doubt.

What good does your help do if it’s not heard? There are many ways to get your content in front of viewers. You can try different outbound tactics, but you’re not sure whether anyone wants to hear from you anyway, so you might want to try some inbound strategies.

You know SEO, but climbing top spots is hard. You also want to make sure that your content resonates with your audience before putting so much effort into such a long term strategy.

This article is the third of a series. This is the first and this the second one.

The Alternative

That’s where Quora comes into play. Quora doesn’t replace SEO, but it can generate a lot of traffic and even improve your SEO.

Quora is a great platform to get a solution (your product or content) to people who have the problem it’s solving. Instead of throwing your stuff in front of everyone’s eyes (running ads), you can not only give that information to people who could find it useful, but to people who ask for the solution themselves.A person asks a question, you answer it, many people see your answer.

The Basics of Quora

Create a Profile

In order for your activities to convert, you should craft a good profile page. People will often go to your profile after reading your answer, so make sure to use your profile. Write some good copy like you’d do on your website. You can view the profiles of popular writers on Quora to get an idea of what you could do. One thing to keep in mind during all times on Quora is to be authentic.

Photo by Daniel Hjalmarsson

Some Things Before You Start

You’re now ready to answer some questions. Things you have to know before starting:

• It’s a long term strategy — no quick wins
• Be genuinely helpful
• Be credible
• Don’t sell too hard
• You should be a good writer

Knowing all these things, you can now search for questions.

Find Good Questions

It’s important to focus your efforts on Quora on topics within your industry. You want to get people who are possibly interested in your product or interested in working with you to read your answers. Keep focused on a few topics. If you write about your industry, you’ll get the traffic you want. Write about something completely different and people might still find what you have to say interesting, you might even reach a wider audience, but it won’t be the audience you’re after.

Knowing that, you should choose 2–3 topics on Quora. Simply use Quora’s search to find some topics for your industry.

Topics have followers. Make sure not to choose one with too few.

Now that you have your topics, start searching for some questions. Though being the most important factor, the title of a question isn’t the only one you should look at before writing your answer. There are a couple of stats you should look at.

A question has its own stats section. You can also look at the number of answers. Make sure that there aren’t too many answers already. The answers at the top reach way more views than the ones below, so you should be confident that you can climb to the top before answering. If you’re just starting out, you should probably only answer questions with less than five answers. The ratio between followers and answers should be high. The amount of answers is basically the only number that should be low.

You might have to go through many questions to find a compelling one. To make that a little easier, you could use Find Better Questions, which automates your research and presents you with a simple spreadsheet.

Photo by Dana Marin

Writing Your Answer

Be emotional. The most popular answers make you laugh. Personal stories make it to the top of Quora. Not facts that anyone could have googled.

Formatting:

Use bold text

• Use lists

Most importantly: Answer the question. Many people focus on bringing their message across when trying to market themselves or their businesses. If you only do that, you will not only not get any views, but you risk being kicked from Quora.

One more thing before you post your answer: Update your bio tagline. It’s customizable for different topics, with a maximum length of 50 characters. Click the little dots beneath your answer to open a menu and click Edit Credential.You can update your tagline for different topics, but don’t change it too much, otherwise it’s harder for people to recognize you.

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