How to write great Quora questions

I’m a big user of the question and answer site Quora and as an active member I am always getting answer requests on questions like “How do I write great Quora questions?” and “How do I write better Quora questions?”

With that said I have decided to make a small series of How-To Guides, a Quora content cluster if you like designed to help you become a better Quora user while building a following, becoming more influential of the platform and with the added benefit of building a good source of valuable clickthrough traffic.

So let’s kick things off with a very short and simple guide to help you write better Quora questions.

In this article, we will be covering

1. Understanding your question audience
2. Search intent for your questions
3. The Importance of keyword placement within questions
4. Your question length.

Let’s get started!

How to write great Quora questions

Understanding your audience

Quora looks for and ranks the best questions.

The question is how do you write questions that Quora considers to be good.

Questions that are good enough to show to other members, and good enough to apply the 19-day earnings bump to if you’re a Partner Program member.

And to answer these questions you need to understand your audience and your audiences search intent.

Quora is not about just slapping questions up there is a whole lot more to it than that particularly if you are in the Partner Program because Quora is not just about Quora members it is also about views and traffic that is gained from outside of Quora from search engines and from other social media sites.

And it is the outside views that are the most highly prized by Quora because this type of traffic is organic by nature and exactly what advertisers look for when spending their social media dollars

So let’s look at an example of a good Quora question

Below is a screen capture of a question that I shared to Quora.

You can view the question on Quora here Do Pinterest trends give marketers a new SEO opportunity?

This question is by no means setting the internet on fire but it is very new and has some potential to develop into something quite valuable to both me as a blogger/marketer and to Quora.

So what was I thinking when I composed this question, what was I trying to achieve?

Well, my number one goal was for any question is to have an impact outside of Quora.

As you can see from the image at the time of creating this post that 55% of its views come from outside of Quora and 45% of the views have been generated from within Quora.

So the question is getting more traffic from outside of Quora than inside.

This question is just 21 days old and is already starting to gain more views externally than internally and here is why.

As you can see from the screen capture below the question is ranking page 1 position 1 for the search terms Do Pinterest trends give marketers a new SEO opportunity?

So if you want to write great Quora questions or just better Quora questions that have more than just Quora appeal you need to really understand the potential audience for any question and when it comes to external traffic you need to understand search intent.

What is search intent?

Search intent is basically the reason why someone is looking for something on a search engine. 

If you can work out why and what people are searching then you can construct great Quora questions that appeal to these people.

When you can do this external views start to flow. 

If you are writing questions about the same things that people are Googling and your getting answers inside Quora from internal views then as you can see from the screen capture above Google starts to show your question because they see it as a great Quora question that answers search intent.

But there is a but and that is that the answers that you get need to be great answers and great Quora answers are born from great Quora questions.

So how do you write great Quora questions

As you now know external views are highly prized by Quora and for external views, you need to understand what Google is looking for.

You need to understand search intent for your questions.

You also need to write your questions in a way that you don’t upset Quora members.

People search short answers on the web so it makes sense that short questions shared to Quora would do well on Google.

This assumption is correct, but here is the problem.

Lots of Quora members have a serious problem with short, easy questions.

They refer to them as Google questions and there is nothing more that they like than just to tell you to Google the answer and just downvote a perfectly good question.

The thing is to actually do what they say and to Google the question, the question first has to have been asked and indexed on another site for you to get your answer.

The big question is why can’t someone looking for the answer to a simple question get directed to Quora for a great answer?

There is no reason at all other than for some reason members think that simple questions are beneath Quora. 

The reality is Google questions generate traffic and that is why Quora has no problem with them.

So how do you please the Quora members and Google?

Well, you need to apply some very simple SEO optimisations to your questions and just learn to structure your Quora questions better.

Here is what you need to know.

1/ Think of your questions as blog post titles

Your title or headline on a blog post is what is going to bring you the traffic, it’s what is going to make the Googlers click when they find you after searching.

Quora questions are headlines, they are your post title, so make them click-worthy.

2/ Keywords

Google loves keywords and it likes them placed as close as possible to the start of your question.

So do what Google wants and get your keywords near the start.

3/ Question Length

One of the reasons why it is good to have your keywords towards the start of your question is question length.

When Google indexes a page it applies a snippet to the search results.

In the case of a Quora question, it is the question title.

The thing is, is that Google applies a character length to the title snippet and if your question is too long it gets cut off.

If your keywords for the question are at the end and they get chopped off.

Your title snippet for the question has no keywords and it suddenly becomes much, much harder to rank on Google.

Ideally, your question needs to be at least 49 characters long and no more than 60.

But this kind of puts you in the danger zone for the Quora members to start with there Google question nonsense.

So what do you do?

Just keep your questions as short as possible without offending members and make sure that your keyword phrase is within the first 50 or so character of the question.

You can then go longer knowing your keywords will show in your title snippet.

If you can manage this you will please both the Quora members and Google search.

.

How to write great Quora questions – Takeaways

Long questions that make you glaze over are liked by Quora members but they are not liked by Google because Google struggles to understand them.

Short Google questions are hated on Quora but loved by Google because people don’t write 300 words into Google.

They write 3 or 4 words, a short sentence at most and so to appeal you need to answer and match what the searcher is looking for.

Members who hate short questions have no real understanding of how Google search works.

Unfortunately for these members, it is external traffic that is highly prized and why you get Google questions on Quora.

If you want to tap into the flow of external traffic on offer then you have to write great Quora question and if not great at least better smarter Quora questions.

Now that you know how to write great Quora questions here is how you write great Quora answers.

Now it’s time to have your say.

Do you already do what is suggested above?

Let us know in the comments section below making sure to subscribe to the comments so that you are notified when I reply.

Regards

Dexter

Follow me at Quora 😉

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Write great Quora Questions - Write better Quora Questions - Quick Guide

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I'm a big user of the question and answer site Quora and as an active member I am always getting answer requests on questions like "How do I write great Quora questions?" and "How do I write better Quora questions?"

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Dexter Roona

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Infobunny

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