Sometime after 2010, Quora supplanted Yahoo Answers as the defacto Q&A site online. Quora dramatically increased its market share by performing well with Google.
Bloggers saw Quora’s rise as an opportunity to promote their blogs. Some bloggers wrote posts about how they were driving traffic to their sites through the platform. Now many bloggers think that you can easily drive traffic to your site through Quora.
And I’m here to tell you why that’s not true. Using Quora to promote your blog is a disaster in the making. Here are seven reasons why.
1) Getting Quora Traffic’s a Dumb Strategy
The Quora traffic strategy basically goes like this.
- Find Quora posts getting a lot of Google Traffic.
- Write an incredible answer with a link back to your website.
- Some percentage of that Quora traffic ends up back on your website. Woohoo!
Here are three reasons this is mind-numbingly stupid.
- If you simply put the great answer on your blog, you could skip the middle-man and outrank Quora on Google.
- Very few people who click-through to Quora will also click-through to your blog post.
- You have to compete with all the other Quora answers.
2) Quora Has The Right To Syndicate Your Content
Buried in Quora’s Terms of Service are lines that state, “you also grant us and other users of the Quora platform certain rights and license to use it.” And “You can repost content from Quora elsewhere.”
These terms give sites like Forbes the ability to copy your Quora answer word for word. As long as they link back to the original answer on Quora, it’s OK. And because Forbes has higher domain authority than both you and Quora, they’ve legally stolen all traffic using your hard work.
Meaning even if you successfully generate a ton of traffic to your blog through Quora, it’s just a matter of time before the sharks swoop in and take it. And it’s entirely legal for them to do so. Your success (which was unlikely to begin with) is temporary.
3) All Quora Links Are No-Follow
Quora no-follows all links on its service (as does virtually every other community forum in 2024). Meaning you are not passing any link juice when you link back to your site from Quora. Those backlinks you think you’re getting for your blog hold no value whatsoever.
4) You Become 100% Dependent on Quora.
You want to be dependent on as few other Internet companies as possible. As bloggers, we’re all beholden to Google. This sucks, but there’s no way around it. However, why are we adding another greedy corporation into the mix? Quora marketing makes you dependent on Google traffic to Quora AND Quora.
What if Quora decides to stop allowing outbound links one day? What if Quora deletes your account for some reason? What if somebody asks the same question on Quora in two years and Google decides that’s the more recent question is the one it wants to link to?
All that hard work you did could completely disappear overnight. And sure, bloggers have to worry that this same thing could happen with Google. But, at least with Google, you’re only beholden to one company. Plus, your interests are somewhat aligned with Google’s. If Google shows their user’s good content they keep using Google rather than moving to Bing.
5) Opportunity Cost
There’s only so much time in a day. Maybe posting incessantly to Quora can get your blog some traffic in the short run. But, is that really the best thing you can be doing with your time?
Imagine a scenario where I asked you to travel from California to New York. Yes, you can run there. But, is that really the most efficient form of travel? Wouldn’t you be better off driving or flying? Or, in this analogy, posting your awesome content to your own website?
6) Quora Won’t Send Enough Traffic To Run a Viable Business.
Unless you’ve created your own product and have your RPM’s in the $100 to $1000 range, the traffic you get from Quora won’t be enough to run a viable business.
Most bloggers out there monetize with ads and have a few affiliate marketing programs sprinkled in. The amount of money you make per 1,000 visitors with ads maxes out around $30 per 1,000 pageviews. How much traffic do you expect Quora to be sending you?
To make 6 figures a year with a $30 RPM Quora would need to send you 277,000 visitors per month. Good luck with that! I’d be shocked if you managed to obtain 10,000 sessions per month from Quora marketing. Even with a $30 RPM, you’re only bringing in $300 per month. Unless you live in an impoverished country, this plainly isn’t worth it.
7) There Are Better Options For Syndicating Content
Longtime readers of this blog know that I’m not a big fan of guest posting or syndicating your content on Medium. That said, tell me how both of those options aren’t better uses of your time than Quora marketing is?
At least you get a backlink and direct promotion to another blog’s audience with a guest post. While I’d argue an individual backlink isn’t that valuable, it’s certainly more valuable than the zero do-follow backlinks you get from Quora. Your time would be much better spent writing guest posts.
The same goes for writing on Medium; I’m not a fan of it. That said, at least Medium’s partner program pays you decently when you get Google traffic. Quora gives you nothing; it has no value unless you’re able to drive their traffic back to your website.
If you feel like syndicating content, Medium and guest posting are better places to do it. Stay off Quora; it will get you nowhere fast.