How to Use Reddit to Improve Your SEO Performance
Lots of SEO specialists and content marketers overlook Reddit when building their overall strategy. And, this is a mistake, even if it isn’t unsurprising.
Reddit can seem to be a very intimidating social platform if you have never used it before. It’s a circus where tons of things seem to be happening at once, and it can be difficult to know where to look. But if you know how to use the platform, your content could see great gains, and your conversion rate will definitely improve.
So, what is Reddit, and how can it be used as an effective off-page SEO strategy?
Well, let’s have a look!
What is Reddit?
According to Wikipedia, Reddit is a “social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website.”
But this may seem a little difficult to digest, so perhaps a better way to describe it is a platform to create unique internet forums where people can post a piece of content in a related “subreddit”, and other users can comment on it. Content can include links, images, videos, and text.
With more than 430 million monthly active users, tons of subreddits, users can join, covering a vast array of topics. The most popular subreddits include r/AskReddit, r/gaming, r/Music, r/funny, r/pics, and r/videos.
External links are the most popular form of content – for example, links going to new websites or videos on YouTube, etc. Every day tens of millions of interactions are made on the site on posts across all subreddits.
5 Facts About Reddit’s User Base
If you are going to use Reddit for marketing, it is important to know what sort of community you are dealing with. So, here are some facts you need to keep in mind:
- Just under 60% of all users are based in the United States.
- The average user has a bounce rate of around 25%
- Most users are between the ages of 20 and 30.
- More likely to be male
- Most users have one of two goals when using the site:
- Read news updates
- Find content that relates to a specific area of interest
4 Tips for Using Reddit for SEO Purposes
Below we aim to show you how you can use Reddit to improve the performance of your website:
1. Become a Valued Member of the Community
Understand that Reddit is not your personal marketing playground. You cannot simply post links to your website and hope to reap the rewards without giving back to the community. If anything, this could hurt your brand image instead of helping it.
A lot of people gloss over the fact that the community has a standard 9/1 self-promotion rule. For every nine posts, you can post a self-promotion post.
This sounds like a lot of admin, but if you are to reap the benefits of promoting your content on Reddit, you need to play by the rules. Remember, the more valued a community member you are, the more likely people are to trust your content.
You can gain karma (which is like a personal score) by making comments and posts. The higher your karma, the greater trust your profile earns. The best way to gain karma is to post valuable content to related subreddits.
Generally, you would want to start a business-focused Reddit account by participating specifically in your targeted subreddits. However, these subreddits may have rules about karma levels or account age, forcing you to post on others to get to the required level.
2. Learn What Type of Content Works in Your Targeted Subreddit
Just because your content is related to a particular topic does not mean that it will automatically work well in a subreddit. You need to learn the community’s layout and angle your posts that go in line with what the community expects.
If most of the community posts are text-based posts, posting a random link with no description will get you no attention at best.
It is recommended you use your knowledge of the community to create new content. Remember that if it can go viral on Reddit, chances are it will go viral on Google.
You can approach this in many ways. For example, let’s say you run a blog about photography and you see that lots of members keep asking about the “the best camera for a beginner”, you could write a piece tackling this subject.
So, not only are you using Reddit to promote your content, but you are also using Reddit to understand better what content you should be creating.
3. Create Posts with Target Keywords in Mind
Reddit posts often come up as the first result on SERPs due to the site’s overall authority. If your site is linked in a Reddit post, it means extra opportunities to drive extra traffic to your website.
One of the best ways to optimize your post is to format your post using relevant keywords that most people would use to search for that type of content.
However, you need to keep the community’s way of interacting in mind. If your post does not fit the community’s tone, people will recognize it as shameless self-promotion and will call it out.
Outside of using general SEO tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Google Keyword Planner to optimize your content with good keywords, you could use Keywordit – the Reddit keyword tool. It is free and provides you with information about the keywords that have been popularly used in the community over the past month.
4. Share Your Content in the Right Subreddits
Sometimes, you’ll find subreddits that relate to the market you are trying to promote, but not entirely. Avoid posting in these subreddits – even if it has thousands or millions of members – because it goes against the grain of what is accepted there. It could also damage your reputation as a Redditor.
Going back to the photography example, you will not post a blog about camera gear in a subreddit that is solely focused on photo submissions. While the two concepts are related in some way, the intention of the discussion is not gear.
Concluding Thoughts
A good Reddit action plan should be part of your overall content marketing strategy for two major reasons. Firstly, you increase engagement with your content leading to further conversions in the market area you are trying to penetrate.
Secondly, you create greater authority for your brand. Tons of business use Reddit with a strict marketing plan to cultivate a specific image for themselves on the internet. Examples include IKEA, Yamaha, AMD, Costco, CD Projekt Red, and Nintendo.
Independent marketing studies have shown that these businesses have used the goodwill generated on Reddit to directly improve brand image, which has a strong impact on sales.
You can do it with your brand, too! Although it takes some time, you need to be patient to reap the rewards. And, if you are successful, you could see massive gains from your hard work.
Check out our presentation on the matter: How to Use Reddit to Improve Your SEO Performance
