Reddit is a massively important part of today’s online information ecosystem. Because of that, it can be equally important to your business’ digital presence. Yet at the same time, the reasons for why it’s now so critical means you have to approach it the right way. 

Let’s check it all out: 

Understanding Reddit, its structure, and its value for users 

The first thing to mega-emphasize here before we dive into it: If you think your business can cut corners content-wise and still get something out of Reddit, you are extremely mistaken. 

Of course you shouldn’t be trying to cut corners by providing low-quality content in an attempt to just extract value without providing value anyway, but you super won’t get away with it on Reddit. Not only are Reddit users tuned into their communities — and rightfully won’t stand for others doing blatantly self-serving promotion — but that sort of behavior is against most subreddits’ rules anyway. Which is good, because you shouldn’t be doing low-value, low-quality, spammy content in an attempt to “trick” people into coming to your site in the first place. 

But we should back up and start from the beginning with an intro to Reddit: 

There’s a good chance you’re already familiar since it’s one of the longest-running social media sites — and it’s become more valuable as a crowdsourcing information ecosystem as more and more brands flood Google with low-quality, spammy content that make high-quality information hard to come by and verify. 

If you’re not familiar, Reddit is simply a forum-based social media platform. It’s divided into millions of different communities called subreddits, which can include anywhere from only a couple dozen users to millions. 

Subreddits can be based off any number of things: places (like r/seattle), activities (r/cycling, r/gardening), interests (r/fashionhistory, r/AnimalCrossing), advice (r/cookingforbeginners) and whatever you’d call subreddits like r/catsareliquid (pictures of cats fitting into weird spaces), r/oneorangebraincell (orange cats being stupid), r/catsonglass (cats — wait for it — on glass), or r/drunkencookery (exactly what the name implies). 

The unifying factor is that Reddit’s subreddits are divided into niche, self-selecting audiences. 

For obvious reasons, this can make it an extremely valuable, symbiotic exchange where you bring your expertise directly to these audiences — they benefit from your knowledge and help, and in turn you benefit from being exposed to a larger audience that’s naturally inclined towards what you have to offer. Subsequently, when you can connect with communities in Reddit, you help drive engaged, relevant visitors your way — visitors who are thus way more likely to not just convert, but return in the long term. 

A note on Reddit’s increasing importance in search, and the greater information ecosystem 

We mentioned this briefly above, but people are increasingly turning to Reddit. That’s because businesses’ emphasis on content marketing has led to so many churning out low-quality slop so, with that practice reaching critical mass, increasingly internet users aren’t able to find what they’re actually looking for on Google. 

With search engines’ first many pages of results being, effectively, useless for so many people, they turn to a place where they know real people have real answers: Reddit. 
 
More and more, people are including “reddit” as a must-have search term to weed out low-quality content. And even when they don’t, often Google will include a grouping of Reddit posts near the top of its first page — sometimes for years after that post was originally made. 

As you can probably deduce, this means if you can provide informative, helpful insight on Reddit, people could be directed to it for years. 

Reddit is increasingly important for internet users — and can have long-term SEO implications for your business if you embrace it as a platform to provide genuine help in your area of expertise. 

Which brings us to doing just that: 

Reddit-ing to provide others with high-quality content (and improving your SEO in the process) 

The foundation of all this comes back to our first thoughts: Not only are Reddit users tuned into their communities — and rightfully won’t stand for others doing blatantly self-serving promotion — but that sort of behavior is against most subreddits’ rules anyway. 

Image source: https://zapier.com/blog/reddit-marketing/ 

In other words: You gotta be genuine and helpful on Reddit. Just showing up to go “buy our thing!” won’t cut it, and will probably just get you banned from any given subreddit anyway. 

Improvements to your SEO, an increase in brand visibility, traffic, and engagement — those are all just positive byproducts of the above. 

For starters, make sure your username is clearly your company — it won’t do you much good if you’re bringing a lot to the table but all anyone knows to attribute that to is user CoolGuy99. 

Afterwards — and this can be ongoing as you discover more relevant subreddits — identify which subreddits would naturally include your target audience. Depending on the nature of your business, that could be subreddits related to your city or region, ones about activities or interests relevant to your products or services, and so on. 

After joining relevant subreddits, actively participate in those communities, including in posts that aren’t necessarily directly “beneficial” to you. Like we said, Redditors can sniff out when users aren’t genuine and are just there for self-interest. You’re showing your worth by engaging with your subreddits and providing valuable insight and other content. 

And, for what it’s worth, people appreciate when you’re honest about the fact that, yeah, you are a business that has something to sell! Providing people with insights and occasionally letting them know when appropriate that “Hey, that problem you posted about? Yeah, we can professionally help you out there!” is valid in a way that “I’m not active in this community but I’m gonna try to sell you this thing while obviously pretending I’m not trying to sell you this thing” isn’t.  

A good example of this is STX, a hockey and lacrosse brand. 

Although they haven’t been active in a few years, they were for a long time and were known in the r/hockeyplayers subreddit as a user that would pop up occasionally, particularly to help other users who wanted to discuss their gear options. 

If someone wanted to learn more about different shin guard fits for different body types, they could help point them in the direction of which brands and models work best for shorter legs, larger calves, or skinnier, longer shins; need help understanding how different specs for sticks affect you? Here comes u/STXHockey to explain different blade curves and flexes and how an 85 flex might be too stiff for you, but a 70 sounds about right! 

And then sometimes another user would describe something where a STX product would be an ideal match, and when u/STXHockey would chime in the comments saying, for example, “This model of our gloves sound like they would fit your hand and fit preferences perfectly” — people would appreciate that input. All because it came not from a stance of cynical manipulation, but one of sincere helpfulness. 

Bottom Line 

As you can see, Reddit is really a place where helping other people helps you. Provide value, and it will come back around. On the flip side, trying to just extract value without giving anything in return won’t fly on Reddit (and shouldn’t fly anywhere, anyway). 
 
In return for educating others to help them navigate your realm of expertise, you not only create a strong relationship with a built-in, relevant audience, but leave behind posts and comments that improve your SEO and associated traffic not just now, but for years to come.