Link building and getting sustainable organic traffic are two important targets a successful SEO strategy should achieve. Although there is a variety of ways both of these can be achieved, one of the best ways to do it remains to become an authority in a niche so that everyone wants to link to you or get a backlink from you, and building a community so that people can visit your website from those niche vertical communities. There are very few platforms that do both of those things better than Quora. Below, we will look at what Quora is and if it is worth using it as part of your SEO strategy.
Quora: An Introduction
Quora is an interesting mix of a social media network and a forum. Quora primarily works by giving people the ability to follow topics they are interested in, post questions about these topics, and get or post answers to these questions. Through its use of topics, Quora essentially encourages its users to form communities around these topics.
Quora is a big deal, especially when you look at the statistics behind it:
- ● It remains on the Alexa list of the top 100 most trafficked websites in the world
- ● Quora claims that it has over 300 million users
- ● Quora routinely achieved a top 10 ranking for over 5 million top keywords on Google in 2018
Through a combination of the traffic it receives, the number of active users, and how many keywords it ranks for, Quora is worth targeting for SEO. The only question that remains is, how do you leverage Quora for SEO?
Leveraging Quora for SEO
There are two main ways that you can leverage Quora in your SEO strategy; keywords and content research.
Keyword Research
Being a Q&A community, the questions posted on Quora are asked the same way users would if they were searching for something on a search engine. The language, keywords, and the phrasing of search phrases are all good indicators of the answers people need when looking for a particular product or service.
When using Quora this way, you can start by searching for a key phrase to find questions surrounding that main keyword. From the list of results, you can see all the alternative keywords you could be targeting in your content marketing. For example, a search for “SEO”, yields keywords such as best SEO companies, best SEO plugins for WordPress, SEO or PPC and so many others.
You can also navigate to the different relevant topics and see what types of phrases and keywords are being used to ask questions there. To know what the audience wants, you can check the questions that have a high number of followers. These questions are phrased in such a way that they pique people’s interests for topics they would like answered.
Content Research
If you are having a hard time coming up with content for your content marketing or even social media marketing strategy, Quora is a great place to find meaningful topics to write about.
The types of questions you find under the search results and the topic pages will tell you a lot about what knowledge gaps exist on the internet. Many people post questions on Quora because they could not find the answers anywhere else. By looking at the questions posted, you can tell what people would click on if you posted content answering their questions on your website.
As with keyword research, questions that have a lot of follows will receive a lot of traffic if you write content answering those questions in a way that provides value to your visitors.
Link Building
The one thing you have to realize is that outbound links on Quora are no-follow. This means that there is no authority transferred to you directly from Quota to your website or blog. However, you can still direct people to your blog or website by placing your link on Quora. Therefore, the main benefit of using Quora for link building is for traffic.
To be successful on Quora, you have to post meaningful answers that are both detailed and offer value to the people reading them. Quora lets you add your links to your answers. Now, if people find your answers helpful and want more information, they can visit your website or blog. From there, you can get them into a marketing funnel or use the traffic as you wish.
This type of traffic is very important because the people who arrive at your website looking for more answers are likely to stay for longer reading long-form content. They are also the people most likely to engage with other people in the comment section, post comments, or share your content on social media.
As you know, the amount of time people spend on your website and the engagement levels are very important to search engines. Both of these metrics show that your content is meaningful and important and is therefore given preferential treatment on search engine result pages.
Establish Yourself as an Authority
Establishing yourself as an authority is coveted in SEO because it helps you rank better. If you are an expert in a topic or field, you will get noticed on Quora as an authority in that area. By constantly providing helpful answers and content, you will establish yourself as a useful resource which will help you gain people’s trust. When people trust you, they are much more likely to visit your website or blog, or even buy the products and services you may be promoting.
Final Thoughts
Quora is uniquely placed due to its ability to provide some social media functions and some forum functionality. By leveraging both of these, Quora has become the largest Q&A website in the world. Quora can drive traffic, give you ideas for your content marketing efforts, and allow you to become a trusted authority in your area of expertise. All of these things make it a very potent SEO tool that every business should be leveraging.