This link is located on the right-hand column of your main feed, under the heading “Get A Facebook Sneak Peek.” The page that follows explains the concept of what is undoubtedly Facebook’s stab at Yahoo Answers, a well-aged service where people who have a free Yahoo account can browse a massive, ever-updating database of questions and community-submitted answers. Yahoo Answers enjoys great search engine rankings for very competitive terms (check out my Yahoo Answers case study, if you hadn’t already).

In other words, this certainly isn’t anything new. There’s no doubt that Facebook will keep tapping into this massive community to perform even more functions than it already does – if they didn’t, they’d be stupid not to.

Where does it go from here? A “Facebook Answers” section could prove to be successful, given the sheer number of Facebookers currently out there, and the site’s standing as one of the most visited websites on Earth. However, will it compete with a household brand that already does well on search engines? Maybe, if it also starts getting loved by Google, Yahoo & Bing. Otherwise, it will be a closet accessory.

What does it mean for internet marketers? It depends. On Yahoo Answers, you can at least reference a link back to your site once you’ve reached a certain “level” with your account, making it a no-follow (but potentially high visibility) backlink. Will Facebook follow suit, or will they restrict links? Will they have mercy on affiliate marketers, or punish ‘em like they do with affiliate links posted on Facebook Pages? The answer to that will determine if this is another good venue for bringing from FB traffic to your site(s). Only time will tell, of course!

This is the data showing all referrals, INCLUDING search engines. As you can see, Yahoo Answers accounted for 9,408 visits from January 1st to today (November 19th) with a sweet 17.8% bounce rate. Yes, those were worthy visitors!

Yahoo Answers gave us a 0.49% conversion rate. Considering that a “conversion” is when someone signs up with our company, and we make around $1,000 per month in royalties from their services, that’s a welcome return from a totally free service that costs us nothing to advertise on.

Just imagine if you were pulling in this volume on an “easier” business, like a retail site, or any website where you sold products instead of services.

Here’s the even more impressive chart:

It’s the same data as before, but for “referring sites” only, with search engines excluded. In this case, Yahoo Answers was #1. #1 by far. It beat out our #2 referrer, a company-owned mini-site (of which I’ve blurred), which had 3,000 fewer visits than Yahoo Answers. Yahoo Answers even beat our Wikipedia page (yes, our company has our own dedicated page on Wikipedia).

There’s one really important and quite possibly shocking aspect I need to mention: nobody here at corporate does anything whatsoever on Yahoo Answers. Just imagine if we had a team of people who used it daily and promoted our company. These results have happened with no effort whatsoever! Of course, my company has an established brand name and we get a good 7,000 web hits per day. It helps when your brand name is known well enough to prompt people to go somewhere on the internet and ask “Is Product X worth it?” or “What do you think of Product X?”

How to Use Yahoo Answers Effectively

For the at-home entrepreneur or affiliate marketer, it would be lunacy not to use Yahoo Answers to promote your site. Just please don’t be an idiot. If you leave a response like “click here:” and include your link, you’ll look like a jerk and you’ll make your intentions blatantly obvious. Respond with a good 5-6 sentence paragraph and be helpful. Then, offer your link in the “source” box, and move on to another question. You’ll need to be level 2 in order for your hyperlinks to show up on Yahoo Answers; otherwise, they’ll be worthless text links. With that being said, “level yourself up” by answering questions each day (you can only do so many before you fill your daily quota). It’s worth your time.

Once you have the ability to leave some real hyperlinks behind, you’re set. The more helpful you are, the better your chances are of getting a thumbs-up, or even better: voted “Best Answer.”

There’s one main reason why you’ll want to get voted as the “Best Answer.” Your post gets cemented to the top of that Yahoo Answers page forever. All Yahoo Answers pages get locked after a certain time limit – so, you can get a permanent backlink (or “free advertisement”) to your website on Yahoo Answers. It’s NoFollow, but any internet marketer who has a brain knows that NoFollow links are totally fine. Besides, the traffic you’ll funnel from a high-ranking Yahoo Answers page is worth its weight in gold.

Think of it this way: someone asks “Is Product X worth it?” You happen to be there to answer the question before its time limit is up. You write a super-helpful blurb about how “Product X” is worth it, using relevant keywords for on-page optimization of that Yahoo Answers page, without sounding spammy. You’re the only one on that page who submitted anything other than some crappy 5-word answer. Then, you insert a link under your review, and submit it. Awhile later, you return to see that you’ve been voted “Best Answer.” The page itself is locked, and nobody else can leave replies. A year later, “Product X” becomes all-the-rage again. That old Yahoo Answers page named “Is Product X worth it?” is already on Google page 1 for the phrase “product x.” People click it, and the first thing they see is your review and link.

It’s money in the bank.