Originally Posted by Zafar Ahmed

By utilizing the categories in Yahoo Answers, a site owner can use the content and knowledge available via their site or research to actively answer questions which are being asked within Yahoo Answers and not only will such participation build that expert recognition, but also possible traffic, links and sales.

Each Yahoo Answers form comes with a section for listing web sites as references to the answer. These direct links do include a NoFollow attribute, which makes it more difficult for search engines to use those links as part of their link popularity ranking algorithms, but that does not stop people from following these links.

In fact, these links are shown to result in referring traffic to the sites of those users who answer with in depth and accurate answers. And if an answer is chosen or starred as a quality answer by the Yahoo Answers community, this may show Yahoo Search that the site referenced is a quality and resourceful site, marking it as an authority and helping its Yahoo ranking.