Essentially there are only 3 reasons
- You want to generate brand awareness for your business by answering questions that are contextually relevant to your business.
- You’re a crazy SEO Expert & there are no lengths you won’t go to help your website accomplish its goal. The goals will be
- Driving referral traffic
- Trying to rank for keywords by hyperlinking anchor text keyword.
- Using trending questions as a business listing, by smartly enlisting your business as you answer the question. This also allows you to pull decent referral traffic to your website as a result. Trending questions that rank in first page search results can potentially have +15K views.
- You want to grow your personal brand so as to complement your business. What do you do? You answer every question that is relevant to your niche.
Under ideal circumstances, you will stumble upon these magical questions that are key to achieve your business/ website goals and objectives. But time is precious, finding questions the traditional way can be tedious & time-consuming.
Recommended: 5 Easy Ways to Transform Quora into a Digital Marketing Tool
The Tool which you will require to exploit this shortcut is none other than Google Custom Search Engine
A brief introduction of Google CSE. Google Search Engine is well known for delivering the best results for the given query.
Google Custom Search Engine, on the other hand, is an awesome tool to get filtered results that are specific & from specified websites. Hence it’s called custom search engine. As you customize the search engine exclusively for you.
Of course, the general public is unaware of this tool, why? because they probably don’t need to go through trouble finding solutions. Google has updated itself so much that the user gets satisfied with search results almost every single time. Hence, the SEO Joke, “If you want to bury a body, bury it on page 2 of Google”.
As for Digital Marketers, Publishers & Bloggers using Google CSE, you can find trending questions on Quora for a given topic.
Heck, you may even spot questions that are occupying first page search results/ Rich Snippet for a very competitive search query.
Here is a step-by-step Tutorial to use Google CSE to find Quora Questions
Step 1: Google "Google Search Console"
The first step is a no brainer. All you have to do is Google “Google Custom Search Engine” & click the first search result. It will take you to the page where you will create your very first Google Custom Search Engine.
Step 2: Click → Edit Search Engine → Add
Click on “add” right below Edit Search Engine. It will take you to the resulting page where you can define the website from which you want to find the results.
Step 3: Add "Quora.com" in sites to search and add the name of the search engine in the placeholder below
Right below sites to search add “www.quora.com”. Name of the search engine field will be populated automatically based on what you put in sites to search field. After that, you need to click on create & boom!
Give yourself a pat on your back, you have just created your very first Google Custom Search Engine. Now in this newly created Google CSE you can search for anything & the results will only come out of Quora.com.
Note: This works for any website & not just Quora. You can find filtered results just from LinkedIn or any other website for that matter.
Step 4: Click on Public URL to use the Google CSE in your web browser
Just Tap on Public URL to finally begin using the custom search engine which will display results from the selected website only. Which in this case is Quora. The results that it will reflect would be questions because Quora is a question answer website.
Step 5: Hover over the search results to find the perfect Quora Questions
To demonstrate, I have searched for “Instagram Marketing” & the Google CSE has produced results just from “Quora”. Since it’s a question answer website, hence you can find just questions in search results.
The two golden eggs which I have identified here are
How to improve your Instagram Marketing Performance?
What is the best free source to learn Instagram Marketing step-by-step?
Now the interesting thing is that, if you check the stats log for the 1st question, you will find that the question has been viewed 59,677 Times and is being actively followed by 79 people.
That’s how you spot the golden opportunity to strike when it’s hot. If you answer that question, immediately 79 people will be notified that you have answered the question, not to mention to all the other people this answer will reach out to via Google Search & Quora feed since the question is quite popular.
How can answering Quora Questions help you?
What’s the benefit of this?
Your Business Website can benefit from answering questions on Quora. First things first, you are not just trying to drive traffic to your website, more importantly, you are answering questions that are contextually relevant to your business. That is how you establish Brand Advocacy using Quora.
Secondly, yeah! you can drive qualified referral traffic using Quora. The website traffic which will arrive would be qualified.
Thirdly, (This is Gold) You can actually use Quora questions as a business listing to add your business on the question that has gone viral, not just on Quora but more so on Google SERP.
Let’s assume, you have a Local Business with a dedicated website. You are proclaiming to be the “best Commerce Classes in Pune”.
Guess what? using Google CSE you can find all the trending questions like “Which are the best 12th Commerce & CPT classes in Pune?” I’m not making it up, this question is actually asked in Quora.
Quora is like a gold mine for Local SEO. In fact, Quora is increasingly being incorporated as part of the Social Media Optimization Strategy.
The strategy you build & executive to make your website popular over the web.
What’s more?
You can use Google CSE + Quora to explore content ideas for your next viral blog post. Not only can you find ideas for the blog post but you can also find questions you would like to answer in the blog post.
What other benefits from Quora or Google CSE you would like to add, let me know in the comments.
Kunjal Chawhan founder of Decode Digital Market, a Digital Marketer by profession, and a Digital Marketing Niche Blogger by passion, here to share my knowledge