5-Step Guide to Search Engine & AI Visibility

What Is Reddit SEO?

Reddit SEO is the practice of optimizing your Reddit profile, posts, and comments to increase your visibility in Google search results and AI-powered answers.

Reddit is often highly visible in search results since many searchers are looking for genuinely useful content and real perspectives. 

Why Is Reddit SEO Important?

Reddit SEO is important because it can improve your brand’s visibility in search results and AI responses. Reddit threads often appear prominently in Google for valuable search terms. Like this search for the best AI vibe coding tool:

Plus, Reddit has seen major growth in organic (unpaid) search visibility over the past few years. With traffic increasing by ten times since early 2023 per Domain Overview. (Likely thanks in part to the 2024 Google Reddit deal that gave Google more access to Reddit’s data.)

And here’s a graph from Organic Research of Reddit’s presence in Google AI Overviews over the past year.

The site appeared in just 2.3K AI Overviews in November 2024. Now it appears in more than 8.3 million of them.

And according to the Visibility Overview for Reddit.com, 23.6 million pages on the site are currently cited in AI responses. (Across ChatGPT, AI Overviews, and Google’s AI Mode).

Compare that to the 1.7 million source opportunities the site’s competitors appear for that Reddit doesn’t. 

This means Reddit appears for around 92.8% of all potential opportunities across these AI tools.

Reddit’s reach across organic and AI search makes it a valuable place to build visibility for your brand. This article will show you how to do that with Reddit SEO.

How Does Reddit SEO Differ from Traditional SEO?

Reddit SEO is different from traditional SEO in that you’re optimizing for search using a third-party platform rather than your own website. 

With traditional SEO, you build website authority through backlinks, optimize the page experience, and create content designed to be helpful to searchers. 

Success in traditional SEO typically looks like:

• Strong rankings (the exact positions where you appear in search results)
• High levels of organic traffic
• Conversions from that organic traffic

With Reddit SEO, the content that performs well is conversational and perhaps even more helpful—it’s not highly optimized for search engines. 

Success with Reddit SEO is still largely tied to conversions, as that’s the overall goal of any marketing strategy. But other success metrics for Reddit SEO are often harder to attribute, and they include factors like:

• Increased brand searches from users that discover or engage with your brand on Reddit 
• Conversions from Reddit referral traffic 
• AI visibility of Reddit threads you’ve contributed to 

We‘ll show you how to track some of these metrics below. But the takeaway here is that Reddit should be part of your SEO strategy—it shouldn’t be your entire SEO strategy. 

How to Build a Reddit SEO Strategy Step by Step

1. Set Up Your Profile

Your Reddit profile is the entity associated with the content you create. So you want to optimize it in a few ways.

When it comes to choosing a Reddit username, it’s probably best to use a branded username if you’re primarily looking to offer customer support. This way, Reddit users know they’re talking to an official company representative. This is particularly relevant if you set up your own branded subreddit, which we’ll cover later on.

In the Semrush subreddit, our team operates under the username u/semrush. This way, it’s always clear to users that they’re getting assistance from a real member of the Semrush team.

If you’re using a branded username, you might also want to use your brand logo as your profile picture. Again, to make it clear to Redditors who they’re talking to.

But you don’t need to use your logo (the u/semrush account doesn’t do this). Reddit’s default avatar pictures are common across the platform. And anonymity is a key aspect of Reddit’s culture that makes profile pictures less important.

Finally, write a brief, honest bio mentioning your expertise without being promotional. It’s a good idea to make it clear that you represent your brand, too. 

Emmet Gibney, CEO of affiliate tracking platform Rewardful, uses his first initial and full second name for a username, a default-style avatar for his profile picture, and a short but complete description: “CEO at Rewardful.com”:

2. Find Relevant Subreddits and Threads

Choosing the right subreddits ensures you create posts and respond to comments that are most relevant to your business. And therefore more likely to drive SEO results.

Use these criteria to identify potential subreddits:

• Activity level: Look for communities with consistent daily posts but not not enough activity to bury your content
• Engagement quality: High upvote-to-comment ratios indicate engaged audiences. Avoid subreddits where posts get lots of upvotes but few meaningful discussions.
• Moderation style: Read the rules carefully. Some subreddits ban any business-related content, while others allow it if you follow guidelines.
• Topic relevance: Target subreddits where your audience naturally discusses problems your product solves

Search for Brand Mentions on Reddit

Subreddits containing posts that mention your brand can be worth engaging with. You can find these by running a “site:reddit.com [your brand]” search on Google. 

Using this “site:” search operator will help you find viable subreddits (like r/AffiliateMarketing in the example above) and potential threads. 

The CEO of Rewardful joins relevant threads to share helpful insights while still being upfront about the fact he’s representing a brand. 

Search for Competitor Mentions

Search for your competitors’ names in relevant subreddits to find posts where they’re mentioned as solutions to a problem. Join those discussions by offering genuine advice or mentioning your brand as an alternative.

An example search operator to find these subreddits is:

site:reddit.com -intitle:[competitor] “recommendations” “[competitor]”

(You can also try other words like “options” or “solutions” in place of “recommendations.”)

This returns Reddit results that don’t feature your competitor in the title but do feature them in the content or responses, along with the keyword “recommendations.” This ensures you don’t see dedicated competitor-focused threads (suggesting your product as an alternative in these threads could seem spammy). 

But be careful. If your rivals are being mentioned negatively or if their own content is getting downvotes, you might want to avoid that discussion.

Identify Threads to Engage With

Here are some quick tips for finding Reddit discussions that can help your SEO:

• Join discussions within the first hour or twofor maximum visibility. The longer you delay, the more comments you’ll have to compete against.
• Target threads where the original poster is actively responding to comments. If you offer them genuine value, they may be the first to say thanks and upvote your comment.
• Avoid threads that have already devolved into arguments. The same goes for off-topic discussions, or in-depth discussions about competitors as the best option. Accept when you may have simply missed your chance with a thread—it may reflect badly if you attempt to steer the conversation toward your own brand.
• Start with small or mid-sized subreddits instead of massive ones. Communities with steady activity (around 10–20 posts per day) are ideal. They’re active enough to find good discussions, but not so busy that your comments get buried.
• Use Reddit’s search function within specific subreddits to find recent posts with phrases like “help,” “advice,” or “recommendations.” These are usually from users looking for solutions, and are often opportunities to share your expertise naturally without sounding promotional.

3. Build Karma

Karma is Reddit’s approach to scoring user reputation, which means it plays a huge part in how credible your commentary is and how much you can actually engage on the platform. 

You gain karma by getting upvotes. And you lose it by getting downvotes. This applies to both comments and posts. 

Here’s how to build Reddit karma:

• Post relevant, helpful, and interesting discussions in subreddits 
• Respond to other users’ posts with answers, discussion points, or recommendations (when relevant) 
• Respond to other users’ comments under posts, again with valuable insights or assistance 

Here are a few quick tips for building (and maintaining) your Reddit karma:

• Target posts asking genuine questions rather than rant posts or memes, which can attract a lot of negativity if you aren’t careful
• Ask follow-up questions that advance the discussion. Don’t just say you agree with what someone else has said and leave it at that.
• Use downvoted comments as learning opportunities about that subreddit’s culture. Never argue with downvoters or complain about downvotes, as this can just lead to more downvotes. 
• Study each subreddit’s top posts from the past month to understand what resonates. Note the tone, length, and format of successful posts in each community.

You can filter subreddit posts by toggling the options to “Top” and “This month”:

To get started, here’s an example plan for building Reddit karma over two months (you don’t need to follow these timelines exactly):

Weeks one and two:

• Spend time analyzing and understanding what content gets upvoted and downvoted 
• Begin to add value to existing discussions
• Answer questions in your expertise area without mentioning your business for now
• Upvote other quality content and engage with others—even when it’s not directly related to what you offer
• Example goal: start building your first bit of comment karma

Weeks three through six:

• Continue monitoring content that gets upvoted and downvoted, also keeping tabs on your own comments’ performance 
• Start creating original posts sharing industry insights or helpful resources (only sharing information about your brand when it adds real value)
• Example goal: reach at least 200 comment karma and start building post karma 

Month two and beyond:

• Occasionally mention your business when genuinely relevant to discussions
• Share your own content sparingly, continuing to comment more often than you post yourself 
• Example goal: reach 500+ comment karma and 100 post karma

The specific karma numbers aren’t super important. The broad goal should be to slowly build both types of karma, with post karma naturally taking longer to build than comment karma.

Track your karma growth and engagement patterns. If your karma starts declining, you’re probably being too promotional. 

4. Post and Engage with Others

Here’s how to post and engage on Reddit in ways that provide value and don’t veer toward being too promotional:

Be Useful and Provide Your Insights

Being helpful to other users on Reddit will generally lead to more positive engagement and upvotes.

Start by commenting on others’ posts more frequently than creating your own posts. This is a sign of users that aim to help others more than themselves.

Remember, other users can click your profile and see your comments and posts. They’ll also be able to see your karma, how many contributions you’ve made in total, and how long you’ve had your account.

If they only see posts about your product and few truly helpful comments, they likely won’t trust you. At worst, they might simply downvote your comments/posts or call you out for being unhelpful.

Reddit users want to hear from real people, so share your own real experiences. Like this story about an unexpectedly successful marketing tactic:

But don’t just talk about your successes. Redditors want to learn from other people’s mistakes as well. Plus, this kind of vulnerability can come across as more genuine and trustworthy than if you just talk about what you do well. 

Provide Useful Links

You only want to provide links that actually help other Reddit users. These links won’t always be to your own content. 

Always add a source if you’re making a claim about a number or something definitive. This appears more trustworthy.

Plus, Redditors are quick to ask for a source anyway. 

Only include links to your own content when they genuinely add value to your comment or post. For example, if you’re sharing a free template or backing up a claim. 

When you do add links, consider using URL parameters to improve your tracking. 

Use parameters like:

• Source: reddit
• Medium: social
• Campaign: [subreddit-name]

Here’s what that might look like:

yoursite.com/landing-page?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=r-entrepreneur

Use Winning Content Types and Formats

Here are some ideas for posts that can perform well:

• Industry news: This helps keep people in the community up to date while also giving you an opportunity to add your expert take
• Your wins: Posts like “Here’s how I streamlined our team’s workflow using [process description]” can inspire others. At the same time, those posts can present opportunities to share your product or brand within the success story. 
• Free tools and templates: People love getting value for free. Plus, offering free templates and tools shows that you’re not just on Reddit to promote a paid product or service.
• Behind-the-scenes insights: Sharing how you built your company or offerings can provide an interesting look at how your brand works. Without feeling overly promotional. 

5. Build Your Own Subreddit

Building your own branded subreddit can help you reach your target audience. And give them a place to ask questions, share ideas, and request new products or features. 

Branded subreddits may also help your SEO since they can appear in Google search results. Like this:

Having a branded subreddit is especially useful since users may add “reddit” to the end of their search queries related to your brand. To find out what the Reddit community thinks about you.

You can learn how to set up a subreddit with Reddit’s dedicated guide, but here are the basics for creating a branded subreddit:

Do Some Preliminary Work Before You Launch

Before you set up your subreddit, study other branded subreddits in your niche to understand what performs well. Check their rules and look at the kind of content people share.

Do they allow links? What kind of content does the brand itself share? Does it get a lot of engagement? 

It’s also a good idea to plan some content ahead of time. Posting some content on a regular basis from the start can help drive engagement and make the community feel less empty to new members if you don’t yet have company news or updates to announce.

Set Rules for Your Subreddit

Adding rules to your subreddit ensures the community engages thoughtfully. This will require moderation, some of which you can automate (find out how in this guide).

Generally, making it clear what kinds of questions and comments users can share is a good idea. And you may want to limit the number and/or type of links users can share to minimize spam. 

Setting rules related to accounts’ required age and karma for posting and responding is also a good idea to reduce spam and harmful content in the subreddit. This is one aspect of moderation you can automate.

Determine What Content to Share

The kind of content you share in your branded subreddit should be any content you feel would be most useful to your target audience.

This could be:

• Industry news with your brand’s take
• Company news that is of interest to your users
• New products, features, and services 
• Weekly themed discussion threads (like “Tool Tip Tuesday” or “Case Study Friday”)
• Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions with team members who can provide genuine expertise

Follow Branded Subreddit Best Practices

To make your subreddit as useful as possible:

• Add a brief but helpful description of what the subreddit is for 
• Allow criticism and negative feedback (deleting it damages your credibility)
• Respond to complaints professionally and publicly when possible 
• Create clear escalation paths
• Be transparent about your role as a company representative
• Let community discussions happen organically without over-moderating 

How to Track Your Reddit SEO Results

Tracking how your Reddit efforts are impacting your SEO is key to understanding what’s working. But it’s not always easy to attribute your efforts to solid results.

Below are a few ways to understand how your Reddit SEO efforts are helping to grow your online visibility. 

Monitor Branded Searches and AI Mentions

As you actively work to grow your awareness and reputation on Reddit, you may see an increase in both branded searches and AI mentions. 

To track branded mentions over time, use Semrush’s Organic Research tool.

Add your domain and go to the “Positions” tab. Then add a filter for “Include” > “Keyword type” > “Branded.”

The graph will show the trend in your branded keyword rankings over time. 

To see your AI mentions, go to the “Visibility Overview” tab in the AI SEO Toolkit for your domain. Scroll to the “Topics & Sources” section and focus on “Your Performing Topics.”

This shows you the topics and prompts where your brand is mentioned, and the total number of topics and prompts you’re mentioned for. Track these numbers over time as you perform Reddit SEO. 

If branded searches and/or AI mentions of your brand are increasing, it may suggest your Reddit SEO efforts are improving your brand awareness. 

Use Google Analytics to Track Referral Traffic

You can track traffic coming to your site from links you add to your Reddit posts and comments using Google Analytics. But you’ll need to add URL parameters to do this.

Add something like the following to your Reddit links, changing the “campaign” attribute to something relevant that will help you understand which content is driving the most traffic:

https://yourlink.com?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=reddit_seo

Then, in Google Analytics, go to “Life cycle” > “Acquisition” > “User acquisition” and filter by “First user campaign”:

Find your relevant campaign in the results, and you’ll see data like:

• The total number of users that arrive on your site through a given Reddit link
• The average time users from any given Reddit link spend engaged on your site
• How many conversions you get from visitors who come from a given Reddit link (the “Key events” column)

While you should use links sparingly on Reddit, tracking conversions from links you do add can help you understand what converts best. Learn more about how to track conversions in our guide to GA4 conversions.

Gather First-Party Attribution Data

Asking your customers how they found you can help you gauge the performance of your Reddit SEO campaigns. 

Add “How did you hear about us?” fields to contact forms and track how many people say they found you on Reddit. Consider also asking if Reddit helped convince them to make a purchase and why.

You can then monitor the quality of leads that say they found you through Reddit. Do they spend more money with your business? Do they have a greater customer lifetime value than people that find your brand elsewhere? 

These insights can help you understand the value of Reddit for your business specifically. 

Use Reddit SEO as Part of Your Wider Strategy

Using Reddit as part of your SEO strategy can help you build brand awareness and drive traffic to your site. 

But using Reddit to boost your SEO takes time and effort. You should do it alongside other SEO tactics to get the best results.

For tools to help you do this, try Semrush’s SEO Toolkit. There are solutions for performing tasks like keyword research, backlink analysis, and technical SEO optimization.