Small business marketers should take note: it's become a little harder to swing by Yahoo Answers and leave a link to your site. Still, if you make a regular habit of providing information, some new restrictions could wind up working in your favor.
Marketers used to leave links all over Yahoo Answers for the sake of search engine optimization. Then Yahoo Answers started using the nofollow attribute. This move cut down on spam, making users happier, although it must have frustrated some individuals.
The fresh development works in similar fashion. A post on the Yahoo Answers Blog states, "The Yahoo! Answers team is excited to announce a small but significant change to the site. . . . [A]ny URLs posted by Level 1 Answers members will not be linked."
So marketers who occasionally turn to Yahoo Answers in the hopes of raising their profile or getting a little traffic are in trouble. Their "contributions" may not be welcome anymore.
But marketers who have dedicated a reasonable amount of time to the Yahoo Answers community should still be able to post links, and as spam levels drop once again, they may find that their businesses stand out a little more.
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Yahoo Answers
Thats cool to know, as I have been using Yahoo Answers to send people to my blog, so they can find out about healthy living and how to stay healthy.
I am still in level one but I should be at level 2 shortly. Yahoo answers is a great place to get traffic from.
Mel Smith
My-Healthy info 4u
Thanks...
I like to use Yahoo Answers to market my safety and security web site and raise awareness for it's products. Thanks, Doug, for bringing this to my attention.
Yahoo Answers
I'm surprised it took them
I'm surprised it took them this long to come to such an obvious solution. I'm level 3 and rarely link out. Anyone want to buy my account? I'm kidding, of course. But it's going to happen. Either that, or spammers will just hire low-cost labor to rack up the points. No matter what system is in place, they will find a way to get around it.
SEO Linking
It seems like such a simple change to make that it's surprising it wasn't made a long time ago. It will be interesting to see if this eliminates many of the people who are giving answers purely for SEO reasons and the corresponding links.
Yahoo linking rules
Yahoo Answers
People still need to be careful when placing links. Someone can always complain about your post and it will get removed and your account could get suspended. I did place many links before this and still get traffic from them.
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