When we used to think of “SEO” – we never gave Reddit a second thought but after the Google Reddit partnership announced earlier this year, we are definitely seeing it dominating the Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) and pushing our hard work further down. Why are they doing this? This is what Google Search Liason had to say:
Catching up on this. As we’ve shared before, we’ve been working on making it easier to find content that reflects first-hand perspectives across all types of sites in our search results, including hundreds of forum sites. This ranking improvement launched before and is…
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) March 5, 2024
It’s also just become one of the most visible domains in the US.
What is Reddit?
Reddit is a discussion aggregator. It has tonnes of topics and you can find just about every niche on there from gaming chats to baby advice. The website boasts 57million+ users per day and over 100k active communities.
The platform is heavily moderated. They hate self promotion so we have to be tactical by engaging in the right communities and being transparent about who we are.
How to use Reddit for SEO
First things first, we have to create a profile. Include a link to your website. You can also link to your socials and a blog. Its worth noting that Reddit links are “no follow” so should be ignored as part of any backlink strategy. Links added within a Reddit post initially start as nofollow but they can potentially become dofollow after receiving a significant number of upvotes. The exact number of upvotes required to make this switch is not disclosed by Reddit.
Find your communities
A Topic on Reddit is called a “subreddit”. Choose subreddits that are close to your business. For example, if you sell firewall software, look for a subreddit that covers cybersecurity. The closer you can niche up the subreddit conept to your service, the better chance you have of driving traffic to your site. Just like selecting a demographic in advertising, you want the relevant people to see your links.
Build Up Your Karma
Reddit has gamified usage of its platform with “Karma” – it shows how active you are on the platform as a user. Karma can be earned when:
- Your comment gets an upvote
- You give a user an award
- You receive an award
Karma helps you build trust among the community. The more you have, the more interest (and therefore links) you’ll receive. Building Karma should be the main goal when focusing on a Reddit strategy.
More Karma enables you to create your own subreddits. This means you can control the content posted without having issues with the moderators.
Targeted Ads
Reddit is another social media platform so of course you can pay to be seen. Research shows that forums such as Reddit have a significant influence on the buyers journey.
Reddit differs from other social platforms however as you pay per impression rather than click. As you can imagine, this means a higher cost.
Host an Ask Me Anything (AMA)
These are popular posts among the community when you can select a niche and connect with people interested in your industry, topics or brand.
People who do this well pick a good time of dy when their audience will be around. Weekday lunchtimes are quite popular for B2B audiences.
Create a topic and proof picture for your AMA. This will be your invitation.
The picture can be distributed to your customers by email or across social platforms. And invitations usually go like:
Hi, I’m John Smith, CTO of ABC Networks, @YourRedditName. I’ll be hosting an AMA on Tuesday from 1-2pm EST. It will be about what IT challenges we’re seeing in 2024 and what we’re doing about them.
Listen to Reddit for Brand Mentions
Just like any other social site, you should be “listening” for any mentions by users. If there is a discussion about your business, you want to be there. This is why you should look at investing in a tool that listens 24/7 so you can swiftly join any conversations and squash negativity before it becomes uncontrollable.
…. so in conclusion. It’s time to start including Reddit in your marketing strategy. Select a few times a week you can explore subreddits and respond to questions or discussions. This will help build your personal brand which will in turn help with driving traffic to your website.
For any advice, get in touch!
