“If you can find an active forum related to your niche and establish yourself as a valued member of the community, it can be a fantastic source of referral traffic,” says Max Robinson, founder of FishTankBank. “The great thing about most forums is that the discussions on them last for years without dying down; if you link to them on your site, it can potentially provide you with traffic for years to come.”
Robinson adds, “One technique I use is to find threads on these forums that are ranking competitively in Google and then link to the thread, which further increases the likelihood that it will attract valuable referral traffic.”
Steve Pritchard of ASPLI stresses the importance of providing high-quality information on Q&A sites: "The topics you answer obviously need to be relevant to the industry your company operates in, otherwise you won't be seen as a credible source."
As with almost any marketing activity, you’ll need to provide some value to your target audience. “The key,” explains Pritchard, “is to make sure you’re actually providing value to users when they visit your site – you don’t want to come across as spammy. For example, if you’re an insurance company, start by providing information to users who have a question about your insurance policy or are unsure about what insurance they need. Then, in your response, you can provide a link to a piece of content on your website that relates to the question you’ve asked.”
"Make sure you're selective: answer questions that have been malaysia phone number data viewed by a lot of forum visitors but don't have a lot of answers - this will help you not get lost in the noise," adds Pritchard.
A very interesting tip for getting referral traffic from forums and Q&A sites comes from Jim Milan, the Relationships and Organic Search Manager at fast-growing online retailer Auto Accessories Garage. Instead of just participating in forums, you can also sponsor them.
“For example, we sponsor forums such as fordfullsize.com and gmforum.com . As part of the sponsorship package, we receive buttons on these sites, links to which generate referral traffic to our site,” says Milan .
To attract additional traffic, his company also posts information and advertisements on some of these forums because "traffic from these sites is often highly qualified, which is a huge bonus."
Many marketers mentioned Quora, perhaps the most popular question-and-answer site (analogues in Russia are TheQuestion, Toster, ForumHouse, Otvety.Mail).
Valli Vishnubhotla of B2B digital marketplace Market Inspector points out that almost every industry is represented on Quora: “There is no marketing niche you can’t find on this website these days.”
Of course, you’ll need to provide some value to your readers.
“I look for questions that people have asked about fashion, music festivals, online gaming, and other topics that align with our brands,” says hiring manager Darren Schreher of INTO THE AM. He continues, “I then provide a detailed, informative answer that will be useful to those who read it. I can include supporting links in my answers, which makes curious readers click and learn more.”
“Quora or other similar forums provide a great opportunity to directly address your target audience’s questions and pain points by linking to relevant content on your site,” says Jennifer Lux, a growth strategist at marketing agency LyntonWeb. “Not to mention, you’ll also get an inbound link from a source that’s likely to be relevant. Just make sure you’ve optimized the pages you link to for conversion so that the visitor doesn’t just get an answer to their question, but converts on a relevant offer and becomes a referral lead in turn.”
If you answer the right questions and direct readers to the right pages, you can get very well-qualified leads. “On some relevant Quora answers, we have conversion rates of around 13%,” says Sophie McAulay, content marketing strategist at AND CO.