Rarely. Quora answer links are nofollowed, so they pass no ranking value, and the referral traffic that once justified the effort has thinned badly as Quora gated more of its content behind login prompts. A Quora answer is worth writing when the question itself already ranks in Google for a term you care about, and almost never otherwise.
Quick answer: Quora backlinks are nofollow links from answers and profiles. They do not move rankings. They can send a little referral traffic and build a visible expertise trail, but only on questions that already rank in Google.
You probably landed here with a list of fifty Quora questions, a link to paste into each answer, and a vague memory of a guide that promised "easy backlinks from Quora". Before you write the first answer, it helps to know what the link is, what it was ever good for, and how to tell in two minutes whether a given question is worth your time.
Where the tactic came from
The tactic made sense between roughly 2015 and 2019, when Quora questions ranked well and answers were readable without a login. "Answer 20 Quora questions a week" appeared in every beginner link-building guide, and a good answer could send hundreds of qualified visitors a month for years afterwards.
Nobody who recommended it thought the links passed authority. They were nofollowed then too. The pull was traffic and visibility, and for a while it was real.
Three things eroded it.
The login wall. Quora progressively restricted how much of an answer a logged-out visitor can read before hitting a sign-up prompt. A visitor arriving from Google who has to create an account to finish reading mostly does not create an account. Whatever the answer's ranking, the click no longer converts to a reader.
Answer volume and AI dilution. Quora launched its Poe chatbot platform on 21 December 2022, as TechCrunch reported at the time, and has leaned heavily into AI-generated content since. Popular questions now carry dozens of answers of wildly uneven quality, and your carefully written answer sits somewhere down that list.
Google's appetite for large UGC aggregators shifted. Community content still ranks, Reddit conspicuously so, but Quora's visibility across Google's index has not tracked that recovery. This is checkable rather than a matter of opinion: search a handful of your target questions and count how many Quora URLs you see.
Are Quora backlinks dofollow or nofollow?
Quora backlinks are nofollow. On a live Quora question page checked on 8 October 2026, all 24 external links inside answers carried rel="noopener nofollow"; none carried ugc or a plain followed attribute. Inspect any answer link yourself by right-clicking it and choosing "Inspect", then reading the rel attribute on the <a> tag. Treat a profile's website field the same way: check the tag, do not trust a "dofollow sites" list.
What nofollow means today comes from Google. Its September 2019 post on evolving nofollow notes that the attribute was introduced nearly 15 years earlier (in 2005) to fight comment spam, adds rel="sponsored" and rel="ugc", and says all three are now treated as hints for ranking rather than hard directives. For crawling and indexing, nofollow became a hint on 1 March 2020. A hint is not zero, but nobody outside Google can tell you how much weight it carries, so plan as though it is zero. Dofollow vs nofollow links covers the difference in full.
The one test worth running before you answer
Judge a Quora question by whether it ranks in Google, not by its view counter. That number counts logged-in Quora feed impressions, not search visitors, and it flatters every question on the platform.
Evaluate it in Google instead:
- Search your target query in Google, incognito.
- If a Quora page appears in the top ten, that page has an audience worth joining.
- Search the same query with
site:quora.comappended to find the strongest Quora question on the topic, then check whether that question ranks for anything.
If no Quora URL ranks for any query you care about, writing an answer is writing into a room with the lights off. That is the whole test, and it takes two minutes per question. Most link-building guides never mention it, which is why people spend months on answers nobody reads.
How to get backlinks from Quora (and what you actually get)
Getting backlinks from Quora takes about an hour per answer, and what you get is a nofollow link plus whatever readers the question already has. The honest walkthrough:
- Find questions that already rank. Run the Google test above on 10 to 20 queries in your niche. Keep only the questions where a Quora URL sits in the top ten.
- Answer in full. Write the complete answer in the answer itself, with your own examples. An answer that only makes sense as an advert gets collapsed by Quora or ignored by readers.
- Add one in-context link. Link a resource page on your site where it genuinely supports a point, not a pricing page. One link per answer is the natural ceiling.
- Fill in your profile. The profile has a website field and a bio. That is your second link and the place to show real credentials under a real name.
- Expect nofollow. Both links carry nofollow. What you are buying with the hour is referral traffic and a public expertise trail, not PageRank.
Worked example (illustrative): you test 20 questions and 3 pass the ranking test. Three thorough answers is an afternoon of work, and the realistic return is a few dozen referral visits a month if the questions hold their positions. That is a reasonable afternoon. Fifty answers on questions that never ranked is a wasted month.
Quora vs Reddit
Reddit is the better use of community hours in 2026, for ranking presence and for AI citations. The two get lumped together as "Q&A backlinks" but they behave nothing alike now.
| Quora | ||
|---|---|---|
| Link attribute | nofollow |
nofollow / ugc |
| Ranking value passed | None | None |
| Google visibility trend | Declining | Rose sharply from 2024 |
| Logged-out access | Restricted by prompts | Fully open |
| AI citation frequency | Low | Among the highest of any domain |
| Best use | Niche referral, author credibility | Ranking presence, AI citations |
The AI citation row is measurable. Similarweb's analysis of ChatGPT citations in the US for January and February 2026 put Reddit at 11.97% of all citation events, second only to Wikipedia at 13.15%. Quora does not appear anywhere near that. That table is the reason to spend your community time on Reddit rather than Quora if you only have the hours for one. Quora answers sit behind the prompts that make the content harder to retrieve cleanly.
What Quora is still genuinely good for
Quora is still useful for three things, none of them link equity.
Narrow professional niches. In some B2B and technical categories, a specific Quora question is still the only page on the web asking exactly that question, and it holds a top-three position for years. If yours is one of those categories, a handful of thorough answers is worth writing, and rewriting when they slip.
Author credibility. A public body of answers under a real name with real credentials is an E-E-A-T asset. It is not a ranking signal in itself, but it is the kind of verifiable expertise trail that makes an author bio checkable rather than decorative. E-E-A-T in SEO covers why that matters more than it used to.
Question research. Quora is a free source of the exact phrasing real people use for problems in your niche. That is genuinely useful input for a content plan, whether or not you ever post an answer.
If you're going to answer anyway
Answer few questions, fully, under your real name, with one useful link. In practice:
- Answer the question fully before mentioning your product, if you mention it at all. An answer that only makes sense as an advert gets collapsed.
- Link a resource page, not a sales page. Nobody follows a nofollowed link to a pricing page from a Q&A site.
- Use your real name and credentials. Anonymous answers carry none of the credibility benefit, which is the main thing left on the table.
- Answer few questions well. Twenty thin answers with the same link is the pattern described in what to avoid when building backlinks, and it is as visible to Quora's moderation as it is useless to you.
- Never buy Quora answer placements. Paid-placement services deliver nofollowed links inside answers that get collapsed or deleted, on accounts that get banned.
Where followed links actually come from
The followed, in-content links that move rankings come from three places: earning them with something worth citing, asking through outreach, or trading directly with other site owners. Quora, Reddit, forums and social platforms all sit in a different category, places worth being present for reasons that are not links.
Backlinkster does the third: one-for-one in-content swaps between owners of related sites, each link placed inside a real article on the member's own domain, and each swap verified by API. Five swaps a month on the free plan; see the plans.
Frequently asked questions
Are Quora backlinks worth it for SEO? Not for ranking value. Quora nofollows answer links, so they pass none. They are occasionally worth it for referral traffic, but only when the specific Quora question already ranks in Google for a query you care about. Check that in Google before writing anything.
Are Quora links dofollow or nofollow?
Nofollow. On a live Quora question page checked in October 2026, every external link inside answers carried rel="noopener nofollow". Verify it by inspecting the <a> tag rather than trusting a "dofollow sites" list.
Can you get dofollow backlinks from Quora? No. Answer links and profile links are nofollowed, and there is no answer type, account level or paid placement that changes that. Anyone selling "dofollow Quora backlinks" is selling nofollow links or links that will be removed.
How many backlinks can you get from Quora? As many as the questions that pass the ranking test, which for most niches is a handful. Each answer carries one in-context link and your profile carries one more. Since they are all nofollow from one domain, the second and twentieth add nothing to your link profile that the first did not.
Do Quora backlinks still work in 2026? For rankings, they never did; the links have always been nofollow. For traffic, they work less than they did five years ago, because answers are partly gated behind login prompts and Quora's Google visibility has declined. They still work for author credibility and for research into how people phrase questions.
Does answering Quora questions help rankings? Not directly. It can help indirectly if the answer sends real visitors, if a writer reads it and cites you on their own site, or if it strengthens a named author's public expertise trail. None of that shows up as link equity.
Is Quora or Reddit better for SEO? Reddit, clearly, for most sites in 2026. Reddit threads rank prominently in Google and Similarweb measured Reddit at 11.97% of ChatGPT citation events in early 2026; Quora's search visibility has declined and its content is partly gated. Quora keeps an edge only in narrow professional niches where a specific question still ranks.
Do Quora answers get cited by ChatGPT or Perplexity? Far less often than Reddit threads or forum posts. Gated content is harder for retrieval systems to use cleanly, and the signal-to-noise ratio on high-traffic questions is poor. Do not build an AI-visibility plan around Quora.
Can Quora links get my site penalised? No realistic risk from the links themselves; they are inert. The risk is on Quora's side: answer collapsing, account bans, and wasted months. Mass-answering with an identical link is a bad use of time rather than a dangerous one.
The bottom line
Quora backlinks were never about links, and the traffic case that justified them has weakened considerably. Run the two-minute ranking test before you write anything; if no Quora page ranks for your queries, spend the hour on a Reddit thread that does, or on a page of your own. And get your actual backlinks from sites where a real editor chose to place them.
Related: Do Reddit links help SEO? · Are forum signature links still worth anything? · Do comment links do anything for SEO? · Outdated backlink types · Dofollow vs nofollow links · Do social media links count as backlinks?