How to use Reddit for SEO
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Reddit SEO is by no means a new tactic, but ten times more prevalent while Google search engine results pages (SERPs) favour forums and discussions. However, using Reddit to complement your SEO strategy and increase visibility comes with complexity and risk.
Recent Reddit data reveals that users generate a whopping 21 billion screen views per month, gaining traffic and engagement levels that marketers can’t afford to overlook.
Reddit’s algorithms are tough to understand and crack, as it owes its users a duty to prevent spam, untrustworthy accounts and manipulative tactics. We’ve seen brands get blocked and disregarded for demonstrating bad practices, but where risk exists, so can reward.
Engaging with Reddit’s communities really can boost brand awareness and visibility, but its complex algorithms and a sharp eye for self-promotion make it hard. Outbound links are usually penalised, and overly promotional posts can damage your credibility.
To gain any reward, you need to take a thoughtful approach that aligns with Reddit’s culture. This guide will share tips you need to know to make Reddit SEO work for you.
Is Reddit useful for SEO?
Reddit’s incredibly active community offers a different route for SEO professionals to enhance their visibility, establish brand credibility, and attract meaningful traffic. It opens up a whole world of top of the funnel opportunities and a chance to build a positive reputation.
Reddit forums are dominating search results for pretty much every keyword right now, clearly valuing genuine opinions of real people. If these results are hindering your website results, jumping on the bandwagon could be a wise thing to do.
(Source: Google)
Best practices Reddit for SEO
Unlike advertising on Facebook or LinkedIn, Reddit users are highly aware, unfiltered in their feedback (thanks to the anonymous nature of the platform), and fast to spot and challenge anything that comes across as overly pushy or fake.
In short, it’s about being a decent, useful person by sharing helpful information and commenting on posts that you believe you can add value to. Demonstrate that you’re an expert in your niche, use a business profile but adopt a personable tone and hope that your efforts will lead to profile visits and eventually site traffic and conversions.
Your Reddit SEO strategy needs to be about making genuine connections with people-first content.
And it’s not just us spotting the opportunity… head over to Reddit to explore discussions like this:
(source: Reddit)
1. Actively participate in niche communities
Reddit is made up of over 3.4 million subreddits, which are communities made up of individuals interested in specific topics. Each subreddit tends to have its own rules and culture, often made up of various categories to help people find what they’re looking for.
When you’re just starting out, use the search functionality to find subreddits to participate in. Look for communities that align with your brand and your expertise, somewhere you feel you can add value and blend in with other users. This is where you’ll find your people.
Here’s what you should be doing regularly to become an active, trusted member:
- Interact with others: It’s not about adding meaningless comments and asking people to visit your website, it’s about upvoting comments, involving yourself in discussions and giving back to the community to gain mutual trust.
- Use the upvote and downvote system: Keep engaging with posts and comments that you believe in and agree/disagree with. Upvote comments you like, and downvote anything that feels incorrect or irrelevant. Not only does this contribute to the health of the community, but Just avoid getting trigger-happy and downvoting for no reason, this won’t get you far!
- Host an ‘ask me anything’ (AMA) discussion: This type of post is when a user, public figure or expert invites users to literally ask them anything. It usually begins with an introduction post that explains the poster’s experience and allows people to ask questions in a time frame to offer people a chance to learn from an individual about an array of topics related to the subreddit. This is something you’d post frequently, but is a great way of building relationships and inviting people into your world.
Tip: Before you engage in a conversation, check the rules and regulations of the subreddit, as breaking these rules will cause backlash!
2. Identifying keywords and search intent
People tend to turn to Reddit for first-hand experience and information that they can’t currently find anywhere else. If you search for a keyword and only find forums, the likelihood is that no other websites are touching on it enough.
People might feel that their query is too niche or specialised, and want to find unbiased advice. If you come across a new query that hasn’t appeared in the keyword research you’ve conducted using SEO tools, don’t disregard it. Many questions are asked hundreds of times by different users, showing the need for a good solution.
‘What is the’ is the top-used phrase in the /r/BigSEO Subreddit, showing huge potential to answer questions and offer best practices. Questions similar to this are posted in every single niche,.
Keep a list of commonly asked questions, consider whether you could create useful content for them, and add it to your content calendar. After all, SEO isn’t all about search volume, it’s about providing helpful content.
Tip: Place a popular subreddit relating to your industry into AHRefs Site Explorer, adjust the filters to exclude generic terms, and see what common keywords the users in that subreddit actively use.
(source: AHRefs)
3. Respond to relevant user queries and comments
Most people seek advice and insight from Reddit, and be the answer to their prayers! Share your experience, type in first person, avoid robotic, AI talk and make all of your answers detailed and personable.
Don’t do a simple copy and paste across multiple subreddits and discussions, this won’t bode well as you attempt to become a helpful member!
You want to gain upvotes by providing detailed answers, thanking people for their input and replying to comments politely. The more upvotes, the more karma you’ll accumulate, which increases your credibility within the community.
Your karma – in Reddit terms – is a reflection of how many upvotes and downvotes you receive. It’s an indicator of your reputation and a way for Reddit moderators to gauge the quality of your account.
Take note of upvoted comments and posts to understand what the people in each community care about and value.
Tip: If your website is full of relevant content, link to them in the most natural way possible. Before you do, ask yourself: will these users gain value from clicking this link?
4. Uncover your audience’s pain points and desires
As touched on previously, subreddits are where you figure out more about your target audience. Because many people remain anonymous, they’re usually loud and clear about their opinions and the things that bother them.
For a business looking to reach new audiences, you’ll uncover frustrations people have and gain insight into their buying journey. Here’s what else you can learn about people interested in your niche:
- Experiences with competitors: If you’re selling a service or product, you’ll often see debates around poor experience they’ve had with other providers. Reddit is a safe space for people to rant about bad customer service, poor quality products and share what they really want from a business.
- Emerging trends: By observing interactions between users, you may find out about emerging trends and gaps that your business could address.
- Preferred features and benefits: When it comes to discussing products, users share details about their preferences and expectations, so you can see what your target customers value most.
- Communication style: You can build your ideal customer profile by taking into account user behaviour, jargon, slang and lifestyle.
- Potential brand advocates: Engage with individuals that are clear passionate about your industry and have influence over others. You might find yourself some potential brand ambassadors who could help promote your business organically.
5. Create your own subreddit for UGC
Creating a subreddit is a great way to break into the market, especially for businesses offering a new product or service that’s lesser known. Build your own community and engage directly with your audience, make people aware of solutions they might not even know exist.
Reddit can help you gather user-generated content from users who have used your service or bought a product previously. Use this to your advantage. It’s a great way to spark word-of-mouth promotion and position your brand as a go-to authority in your niche.
An engaged community can eventually drive organic traffic to your website and put your name on the map.
Be careful though. While you can share links to your content or product when relevant, it should always feel genuine and ‘human’. Focus on building relationships over pushing sales.
6. Use Reddit to enhance your on-site content
Aside from participating in the Reddit community, use it as a valuable resource for writing on-site content. Blogs and guides should be thorough, written for the right audience and include unique angles that other websites haven’t explored.
You’ll learn A LOT about different topics by exploring Reddit. It’s packed with opinions, new perspectives and top tips that you’ve probably never seen before. This makes Reddit forums one of the best platforms for subject matter research.
At Embryo, our content writers use Reddit to learn more about audiences, pain points and niche topics almost daily!
How Does Embryo Create Content?7. Monitor your impact
It’s no use spending time within platform if you don’t see the benefits. There are multiple ways of measuring success on Reddit from multiple angles:
- Analytics tools for brand searches: Tools like Google Search Concole can also help monitor activity, showing if there’s been an increase in brand clicks. The more you engage, the more people are likely to do more research outside of Reddit.
- Reputation management: Many people turn to Reddit to leave reviews or talk positively or negatively about a brand. Do a quick search on the platform and track how often your brand is mentioned or searched. From here, you can proactively address any negativity and feedback.
- Referral traffic: Use Google Analytics to observe referral traffic from Reddit to your website. That way, you can measure the direct impact of your Reddit activity on driving visits and conversions. It can be difficult to attribute metrics to a specific channel, but even an increase off the back of your efforts is a good sign!
- Karma growth: Keep checking your account’s karma (Reddit’s point system). An increase in points shows that your contributions are well received, indicating that you’re successfully building credibility.
FAQs
Why is Reddit dominating search results?
AHrefs shows that Reddit’s organic traffic has skyrocketed in recent months, but we’re not surprised. Reddit appearing more and more in Google search results is likely because it aligns with search intent and gives people valuable insight. While we can’t ever say for sure whether this is deliberate or a permanent shift in the SERP, we can attest to Reddit being full of diverse opinions, expertise and first-hand experience – everything people love.
Reddit users constantly answer informational queries, which takes up 70-80% of all Google’s searches. Additionally, Reddit helps Google better understand the nuances of text speech and conversation to refine natural language interpretation. This aids in improving its search results and AI tools like Gemini.
How can I align my website SEO strategy with my Reddit activity?
As any seasoned marketer will tell you, marketing works best when it combines all channels. Use the discussions you see on Reddit to spark content ideas, supply helpful content in the form of a knowledge base or blog section and drive traffic.
Capitalise on keywords where the search results currently display lots of forums, and attempt to provide content that combines these answers in attempt to rank about Reddit.
How can I promote my brand on Reddit?
Since this whole blog has been about not overpromoting, you may be wondering if there are any legitimate ways you can spread word about your business. The good news is that you can add paid ads to subreddits or even join subreddits designed to allow promotion.
Some specific subreddits open to businesses to sell their services include:
Aside from specific channels, look out for threads that ask for promoted products/services and as always, check the rules and be mindful of appearing too ‘spammy’ before you do so!
Now you’ve read-it… it’s time to start!
Hopefully by now you understand how Reddit SEO works. While it can be argued that these tactics aren’t necessarily SEO tricks, it certainly can complement your SEO activity.
We can’t say if Reddit’s popularity will continue for years on end, but we can assure you that helpful, people-first content reigns. And that’s where Reddit and other discussion forums often shine through.
