In this Reddit SEO strategy, you will discover 15 tips on using Reddit for SEO.
Specifically, you'll get a detailed Reddit SEO strategy that you can use to help your content rank higher on the social media platform itself and in the search engine results pages (SERPs) across Google, Yahoo, and Bing for your targeted keywords.
The ultimate goal of this digital marketing guide is to provide you with a list of proven search engine optimization methods to increase the visibility of your content, create more quality backlinks to your website or blog, and get your brand out there where it matters most: on Reddit and in the search engines.
After reading this page, you'll know the best ways to use Reddit for SEO to improve your website's domain authority and page authority and get your content found by more Reddit users on the platform.
Table of Contents
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What Is Reddit SEO?
Reddit SEO is the process of optimizing Reddit content to rank higher in search engines and on the Reddit platform so that more users can find relevant content. A good Reddit SEO strategy will increase your brand visibility and the number of quality backlinks to your website.
Is Reddit Good for SEO?
Reddit is good for SEO because Reddit helps you get more targeted traffic to your website and attract organic backlinks from other website owners. Reddit is also good for SEO as you can add contextual backlinks which help search engines crawl and index your web content.
In addition, Reddit has high domain authority, and content posted on the platform can be ranked in search engines for targeted keywords to help your business get better visibility in SERPs. By using the mixed power of SEO and Reddit, you can increase the number of people finding your content on the social media platform and through search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
Reddit SEO Strategy
1. Add a link to your bio
The first step in your Reddit SEO strategy should always start with adding a backlink to your website in your Reddit profile. Ideally, this link will go back to your domain's homepage. See Amin Educate's Reddit bio for an example.
This backlink will not appear as a hyperlink in a web browser, but it will be clickable in the Reddit mobile app. The main goal here is to create exposure for your domain rather than extracting SEO value from the link.
If you follow the following steps in this guide, more Reddit users will view your profile, which can result in more direct traffic to your website. So you should always make sure your target audience on Reddit knows how to get to your homepage.
2. Find relevant subreddits to participate in
The next step to doing SEO on Reddit is to find relevant subreddits to participate in. A subreddit is essentially a subcategory of the Reddit site that allows users to focus on a specific interest or topic to post content.
The more relevant the subreddit is to your website, the more quality traffic it will drive to your web pages and increase your brand awareness. You don't want to waste time posting in subreddits that are unrelated to your site, as the people reading these threads won't have much interest in your content or website.
To find relevant subreddits, simply search Reddit for your target keywords and/or industry-related topics. For example, good subreddits that Amin Educate Brand can use for marketing purposes are:
r/SEO
r/BigSEO
r/seogrowth
r/juststart
r/Blogging
r/content_marketing
r/DigitalMarketing
r/AffiliateMarketing
3. Build your Reddit Karma
One extremely important strategy you should follow before using Reddit for SEO is to build your user Karma. Reddit Karma is your user score. It is calculated by adding up the number of upvotes and downvotes in your threads and comments. It appears on your Reddit profile.
Karma is your lifeblood on Reddit, as it is a direct reflection of how important your contributions are to the community. It's also one of the determining factors for when you can create your own subreddit, as outlined in tip #7 below.
Reddit Karma scores help other Reddit users know who the lower quality posters and spammers are on the platform. So your goal, now and forever, should be to increase your Karma score as much as possible.
You can do this by posting thoughtful and engaging comments on other people's threads and by starting topics that engage users. Basically, be a good contributor to the social media platform Reddit and you will easily increase your Karma score to keep your account safe and unlock new opportunities for SEO and link building.
4. Put your domain in Reddit Flair
This is a powerful Reddit SEO strategy that you can utilize in subreddits that allow you to create your own Reddit Flair. Flair is simply an icon or text that shows up next to your username in a subreddit community.
Some subreddits have a predetermined selection of Flair that you can use, but other subreddits allow you to customize this field with your own text. For example, the subreddit r/Sidehustle allows you to optimize the Flair field next to your username.
As you can see in the image below, I included the text "Tutorial" as a custom user Flair next to the title to encourage people to visit my website.
What's also interesting about this SEO strategy is that every time you post a comment in the subreddit, the Flair will appear next to the title. This means you can create unlimited exposure for your brand and website when you post comments on other users' threads.
To add Flair to your username in a subreddit that allows it, simply follow these steps:
- Open the subreddit.
- Go to the top of the page and click on the three dots (menu icon).
- Choose "Change User Flair".
- Select the option that allows you to type your own text.
- Click the "Edit" button in the upper right corner to make the change.
- Click on the "Save" button for the modifications to take effect.
You can see a complete guide here on how to add Flair on Reddit.
5. Optimize your article titles for SEO
The next step in getting the most out of your Reddit content is to optimize your post titles for SEO. Doing so will be beneficial to you in two ways:
- Your content will be discovered by a larger number of Reddit users.
- Your content can be better ranked in Google, Yahoo, and Bing for your targeted keywords to get more organic traffic.
You can use Keyworddit Tool for Keyword Research on Reddit.
Here are some additional tips you can use for your Reddit post titles:
- Posts with questions get the most comments.
- Posts without questions receive the most upvotes.
- Post titles between 60 and 80 characters generate the most upvotes.
6. Post keyword-optimized comments
Similar to the previous tip, you also need to include specific keywords in your comments so that they appear in the Reddit search engine and are indexed by Google, Yahoo and Bing.
Essentially, you want your Reddit username to appear multiple times for target keywords associated with your brand and website. The more your username appears in the search engine, the more people will visit your profile and hopefully go to your website, read your threads and check out your subreddit.
Additionally, many Reddit users sort search results by "Comments" to find relevant content. As you can see in the image below, comments containing the word "Backlinks" appear as the first results in the list. Therefore, you should use your main target keywords in as many comments as possible when responding to other users' threads.
7. Create your own subreddit for SEO
If you really want to use Reddit for SEO, you need to create your own subreddit for your website. By having a personal subreddit, you have ultimate control over the content you can post without any fear of other moderators removing your links or optimized content from the platform.
But before we can create our own subreddit, our Reddit account must have at least 30 days of history and a minimum of positive Karma, which is not exactly specified. That's why it's important to follow the strategies outlined in tips #2 and #3 above to accumulate that valuable Karma score so you can launch your new subreddit after 30 days.
To make a subreddit for SEO purposes, just follow these steps:
- Log in to Reddit.
- Click on "Create a community."
- Name your subreddit. Optimally, it should be your brand name.
- Complete the other options and click "Create a community."
Once your subreddit is created, you can start posting your own SEO-optimized content to get your brand found more often in the Reddit search engine and on indexed pages of Google, Yahoo, and Bing. You can also include backlinks to your web pages to help improve their page authority metrics.
8. Repurpose your existing content
One of the easiest ways to combine Reddit, SEO, and link building is to repurpose your existing website or blog content on the platform.
You can accomplish this in three distinct manners:
- Copy the entire content of one of your web pages to a new Reddit post in your subreddit.
- Extract only a section of that webpage and post it to your subreddit.
- Write a 300-500 word summary of the target webpage in a new Reddit post.
At the end of your personal subreddit post, you will then add a link back to the specific URL on your website. This method is a great way to increase your brand visibility, drive targeted traffic to your blog content from Reddit users, and get more links for SEO. Other website owners in your niche can also discover these URLs and organically backlink to your content without you having to ask.
Ideally, you'll want to have a subreddit post for every article on your website. This way, you can maximize the linking power and discoverability of every web page on your site. Be sure to optimize the post for SEO in both the post title and the content, so that the content has the best chance of ranking for those keywords in both Reddit and Google search engines.
There are multiple ways to use Reddit to build links. Tips 9-15 below will teach you how to build more backlinks from this platform. You can also read the full guide on creating Reddit backlinks for SEO here.
Note: Reddit backlinks are nofollow links until the post receives a certain number of positive votes. The exact number is not known. However, while most Reddit links are nofollow links, they still reside on a high domain authority site and Google has publicly stated that it now considers the nofollow tag an "indication" and not a "guideline" for links to be indexed in its search engine. Therefore, the algorithm can pass on link equity through these types of Reddit backlinks to improve your website's PageRank scores for SEO. In the earlier days, this was not the case, which is why most people were obsessed with getting dofollow links. These days, a nofollow link is still a good link to get for your website's backlink profile to increase search engine rankings.
9. Join subreddits that encourage link sharing
There are over a million subreddits on Reddit and some of these communities encourage link sharing. Actually, they don't even allow other types of posts.
Therefore, you should look for subreddits that are related to your niche and encourage link sharing. This way, you can easily share links to your website to get backlinks without fearing that Reddit moderators will delete your posts. Plus, other people in your industry can link to your content from their own websites and blogs after discovering it on Reddit.
10. Share value-added content
Here is another content marketing strategy for SEO that you can use on Reddit that will increase brand exposure for your website while helping your backlinks stay on the platform.
The fact is that Reddit moderators are very active in removing comments and posts that are purely made for marketing. You can also have your Reddit account banned if you do too much self-promotion on other subreddits that don't belong to you.
However, one of the most effective ways to keep Reddit moderators happy and get more upvotes than downvotes from the community is to share value-added content on the various subreddits you participate in. And you can do this simply and quickly by syndicating an existing post from your website or blog.
All you have to do is copy and paste a part of the article as a new thread into a relevant subreddit. Then, at the very end of the post, you place the source URL as a backlink. By posting value-added content like this on Reddit, you're showing moderators that you are not trying to scare users away from the platform or drop a backlink in a spammy manner.
Instead, you're allowing Reddit users to consume quality content on the platform itself and if they want to learn more about your brand or website, they can click on the backlink at the end of the article. This is the best strategy for sharing your value-added content on Reddit to keep everyone happy. Placing the link at the top of the article and/or adding a bunch of contextual links throughout the article will be considered spam and will not be tolerated by moderators or its users.
11. Analyze the top ranked Reddit content for SEO ideas.
You can find new content ideas for your own website by using Reddit's search engine to find popular threads. If a topic is popular on Reddit, chances are many people are searching for that type of content on Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
To get these new content ideas for SEO, perform a search for a target keyword on Reddit. Then sort the results by "Top." You can also change the "Time" filter to past year, month, week, 24 hours, or hour if you want to narrow your search criteria even further.
12. Find a hot topic and write a response to it
Another effective content strategy you can use on Reddit is to find the hot topics of the day or week, then write a direct response post on your website. This allows you to add a backlink to your website for SEO, in a natural way that doesn't get the attention of moderators as spammy.
Essentially, you'll write a quick blog post that answers the hot topic question, then post a comment in the thread to let people know about the post.
You can find these golden opportunities for SEO and link building by searching for a key phrase on Reddit, then sorting the results by "Hot." This will show you which topics get the most recent upvotes in a particular subreddit.
13. Publish similar content that gets the most "upvotes."
This tip will help you discover what type of content is performing best on Reddit. This will let you know what type of thread to create to get attention on the platform.
All you have to do is search for a target keyword in Reddit's search engine, then sort the results by "Top". You can also change the "Time" filter to past year, month, week, 24 hours, or hour, if you want to narrow your search even further. Next, look for threads that have the most upvotes. This signals that the post is getting popular among Reddit users.
Once you know what types of posts in a particular subreddit get the most upvotes, you can then create your own Reddit thread in similar subreddits with a high probability that the post will gain a lot of traction for your user profile and brand.
14. Add links to older Reddit posts
This is a slightly sneaky link building tactic for Reddit, but it works quite well when you don't abuse it. You can also get dofollow links from Reddit threads that have satisfied the criteria for turning embedded URLs from nofollow to dofollow links.
This involves searching for a target keyword on Reddit and then finding relevant threads that are 6 months old or older. Chances are, these threads are no longer heavily moderated and you can insert a backlink to your website. Just be sure to add a thoughtful and engaging comment in case someone ever looks at that thread.
15. Create backlinks to your Reddit content
The final tip for combining SEO and Reddit is to create backlinks to your own content. This includes threads you create in your personal subreddit and posts you add on public subreddits in your niche.
Essentially, you want to add backlinks to URLs on Reddit that contain links to your website. The more backlinks you can create to these pages, the more link equity they pass on to your website will increase the PageRank value for SEO.
All things being equal, a backlink from a Reddit URL with 2 high quality inbound links is a much better backlink to have than a URL with 0 backlinks. You can check out these other guides on how to get high quality backlinks and how to discover backlinks of competitors.
Reddit SEO Strategy Summary
This was a guide about Reddit SEO strategy, and I hope you enjoyed it.
As you've discovered, a good Reddit SEO strategy can help you in three main ways: improve your brand awareness on the platform, create more high-quality backlinks to your website, and increase the number of pages that rank well on Google, Yahoo, and Bing for your target keywords to increase your business' visibility.
By using Reddit for SEO the right way, you can further penetrate the market with your content and connect with the right target audience who can build more organic backlinks back to your website from their own websites and blogs.
