How To Use Reddit For SEO Keyword Research

Despite its popularity, there isn’t a lot of info from the content marketing on how to use Reddit for keyword research. Most of it is around how to use Reddit as a content distribution tool.

There are many articles on using Quora for blog topics and keyword research. Like this one and this one.

No doubt that Quora can help you with your keyword research. It is a valuable site with lots of great questions. It has gained popularity as a storytelling site, but lots of B2B marketers turn to it as well to list their respective companies as a top option for a given question.

Quora, however, is not nearly as popular as Reddit. According to Ahrefs, it has 38 million visits per month, compared to Reddit’s 184 million visits. That is more than 5 times as many visits.

Generally, though I can see why Quora is easier. The questions are more specific and linkable. In Reddit, the topics (subreddits) are much broader. Quora has topics and then follows that up with questions, ones that they often suggest. It’s much easier to navigate than Reddit’s rambling nature.

But marketers love to hear from real people right? And Reddit is providing real people by the millions. How do we take those questions and also the answers people offer and turn those into keywords for content marketing?

PS: I saved the easiest for last. Skip down to #6!

1. Know your ideal customer profile and persona.

Reddit has a lot of obvious subreddits (ie. “realestate” if you’re interested in real estate) but part of what makes the community alive, is the varied subreddits and their names.

There is a subreddit on real estate, but also ones on real estate technology, and commercial real estate, and realtors. Those topics are very different, but they could contain some overlap. And if you have a tool to help realtors with their customer email drip campaigns, all of those topics could be helpful. Throw in real estate investing and you have even more audience potential. That means you need to…

2. Search more than 1 subreddit for keywords.

When you’re exploring for keywords and potential topic ideas, realize that multiple subreddits could contain good content for you. Reddit isn’t as formulaic as Quora, and users on subreddits can generally bring up any topic that’s within the confines of the subreddit. Some subreddits have larger boundaries than others. For example, you may also find tips about real estate investing in a larger subreddit, like Investing or financial independence / early retirement.

3. Use these Reddit keyword research tools

LINK: https://subredditstats.com/

A. Higher Visibility

LINK: https://www.highervisibility.com/free-seo-tools/keyworddit/

The Higher Visibility tool doesn’t seem that great (opportunity knocks!). It’s basic and I think their search volumes are off. But! They do search all of the subreddit questions and comments to provide you with a well-rounded list of topics.

How does it work?

Enter your subreddit at the link above.

The tool will parse all of the subreddit questions and answers and then surface (semi-) relevant keywords to use.

Here is their list of keywords for the real estate subreddit.

What do health insurance companies (result #2) have to do with real estate? Click on context and you’ll see the proof, or at least their reasoning for including this keyword.

This is a screenshot of the context for “health insurance companies.”

Hmmm…it doesn’t look like “health insurance companies” is actually that relevant of a word within the results.

You’ll know to quickly dismiss this. It’s worth investigating the context before blindly creating a post about it.

But others like “property management companies” may be great to examine.

This is a better result with context.

Clicking through the first result and into Reddit, you’ll see that the real question is about how much property managers take from a landlord and how they work together:

Notice too, that the question is six years old! So you’ll need to do additional research around this topic to determine its relevancy. But you’re left with a potential question: How Property Managers and Landlords work together?

That would be a great blog topic for a longer-tail topic.

B. Anvaka Github

LINK: https://anvaka.github.io/sayit/?query=

This tool is quite impressive because it provides a connected bubble map for you to explore topics. You can then click on a topic and it will show you all of the trending posts for that topic. Here’s an example, still using the real estate investing subreddit:

In the above example, I click on “realtors” and it shows you how everything is connected. Pretty interesting.

C. Subreddit Stats

LINK: https://subredditstats.com/r/realestateinvesting

Okay, I saved the best for last. Subreddit Stats quickly gives you all of the top commenters, posts, and comment stats over the past year. And it also aggregates the top keywords.

What??? From what I can tell, the keywords don’t link to any individual posts, but it does show how frequently that keyword is used.

You can copy and paste that list and then go to the next step…

4. Run the list through a high-quality SEO tool such as Ahrefs

LINK: www.ahrefs.com

Okay, so now just copy and paste the words into your own spreadsheet or directly into Ahrefs from the Higher Visibility tool or Subreddit Stats.

Take those topics and run them through a higher-quality SEO tool such as Ahrefs, SEMRush, or Surfer SEO. On the cheap side, you can also use Keywords Everywhere.

This is what it looks like after running a few keywords through Ahrefs:

You’ll notice that many of these are very difficult keywords. Focus on words further down your initial list, and then double-check those with the context in Reddit.

5. And/Or Use this Reddit Scraper for Keywords

LINK: https://nickeubanks.com/reddit-scraper/

If you want to capture all of the post title and comments, Nick Eubanks—famous SEO guy—created a Reddit scraper. With this, you can have a sortable list of the posts and check out which posts received the most comments.

I tried it and it didn’t work as well as Nick’s videos, but it still may prove helpful for seeing popular topics, and seeing common answers or ideas. Below, you can see a list of post titles in the /realestate subreddit.

This is the screenshot after using the Reddit Scraper.

6. Run the subreddit through Ahrefs Site Explorer or SEMRush

Okay, I told you this was the easiest. It turns out that many subreddits rank because of Reddit’s high domain authority…but only for a certain time. They’re not very well-optimized and they fade from the top page.

An SEO expert mentioned to me that the comments actually help the subreddit post rank, but then it can drop because it’s not well optimized or because the post will move off of the top page of the subreddit.

This is an easy way to discover new, potential keywords. Because if it ranked with Reddit, there’s a good shot it could rank again on your site.

Here’s an example of the real estate subreddit post ranking for the keyword “start real estate investing” and then trails off. You can see how this post ranks and then tails off:

What Now? Your Keyword Strategy Takes Over

After this part, you should prioritize words and topics based on your own strategy. This isn’t a full-blown method for uncovering amazing keywords, but it may give you a few ideas to start with Reddit.

Reddit is a goldmine that people are just now uncovering. Real competitor and customer discussions are happening in Reddit, but it’s just messy and disorganized. Which means there is an opportunity! Take advantage of it.

And if you have any great tricks, tips, ideas, or hacks for getting keywords out of Reddit, you can reach me on LinkedIn or email me at [email protected].