Inkless Agency
It’s been two years since Google gave Reddit $60 million for its data to train its AI systems, and suddenly, every search engine results page had multiple Reddit posts in its top ten results.
And yet, so much of the advice online about Reddit for SEO is still useless.
If you’ve looked into SEO Reddit techniques, then you’ve probably been advised to make an account and build up karma, post often in relevant subreddits, and comment on all the posts related to relevant keywords.
Maybe you’re like us, and you even tried all those techniques, only for your promotional accounts to get sniffed out and banned within weeks.
So let’s go over what not to do when doing a Reddit campaign, and we’ll also go over what actually works. (Now, a moment of silence for all the Reddit accounts we had to sacrifice in order to learn these lessons).
1. Do Not: Make Accounts Just for the Purpose of the Reddit Campaign
It takes ages to create accounts based on your ICPs and build up karma. And the newer your accounts are, the more likely they are to get banned.
In fact, Reddit will often not let you know that your account has been banned, leading to a situation where you keep commenting on behalf of your business or client, only to realize too late that none of those comments are visible to anyone but you.
Here is a free tool that you can use to check if your Reddit account has been shadow-banned.
Your account should not be for the sole purpose of promoting you or your client’s services.
In fact, you want to average only 1-2 promotional comments per Reddit account. You may be thinking: that sounds like a small number. Can that actually move the needle? The answer is yes, if you use the following techniques.
What to Do Instead: Use Aged Reddit Accounts
There are a few ways to collect Reddit accounts that already have age and karma.
Some people buy old Reddit accounts on websites that sell aged Reddit accounts, and others reach out directly to old accounts and negotiate with the owner to buy them. However, both practices violate Reddit’s terms of service.
Instead, we use Reddit accounts from our team, our client’s team, and even friends and family. We use personal accounts that have built karma and credibility over years because they are legitimately our personal accounts.
Depending on the size of the team that we are doing the Reddit SEO with, we can usually get eight to 20 Reddit accounts together between all of us. When we start a new project with a client, we ask them how many Reddit accounts they already have available, and if they don’t have any old Reddit accounts available, we also ask them to make Reddit accounts as soon as we start the contract (and start building up karma on them) so that we can use those later on.
2. Do Not: Leave Your Comments Public
To protect the privacy of everyone using the accounts, we hide all past comments from view.
Keeping your comments private also means that no moderator can go into your profile history to try to see if you are using it for promotional reasons (but, again, we will only comment once per account).
What to Do Instead: Change Your Privacy Settings
You can do this on mobile by:
Opening the Reddit App and tapping your profile icon.
Open Settings.
Tap your profile name under Account Settings.
Scroll down to the Privacy section and tap Curate Your Profile.
Select Content and Activity.
Select Hide All to hide your posts, comments, and active communities from your public profile.
3. Do Not: Spam Subreddits en Masse
Another common mistake in a Reddit SEO campaign is finding all Reddit posts related to your service or product, keeping them in a long list, and commenting on as many as possible. But we must restrict each account to one comment that is even remotely promotional, so spamming all of the related keywords will just get you shadowbanned.
What to Do Instead: Identify a Small Number of Important Posts
A better strategy would be to identify a handful of posts – say, five to 10 – that are the most important. Here are a few examples to add to your list:
Reddit posts that come up in the SERP for your main, pillar keywords. These are keywords related to your product or service offerings. For example, a main keyword for a rehabilitation facility would be “rehab in [location].”
Reddit posts that rank number one for a relevant keyword. Steer clear of posts that rank #3 or later on a SERP, for the sake of maximizing the impact of your comment.
Reddit posts that get cited often by AI for relevant prompts. You can identify these using software like Gumshoe or Perplexity.
Now that you have a starting point, in order of importance, list out the most critical Reddit posts that you want to comment on. You will probably find yourself deleting many posts from this list if they are archived or in a difficult subreddit, so you can be generous with including posts in this list for now; then you can shave it down later on.
Slowly, start commenting on the most important five or so posts (depending on how many Reddit accounts you have available). You will still save some Reddit accounts for posts that come up later.
4. Do Not: Make Your Comments Obviously Promotional
The comments you leave under relevant posts should have a similar voice to other comments from that account, and they should mention relevant keywords from your business and overall SEO campaign, but they should not be obviously promotional.
What to Do Instead: Let Real Client Statistics Do the Talking for You
Sometimes leaving a comment that says “we worked with a place called [business name]” will do the trick. But specific facts and figures will be your strong suit.
Become familiar with case studies and real client results so you can use them when the time comes. Comments like “we started with an agency called Inkless a year ago and now we get over 100 leads from AI every day” are more compelling than a paragraph of promotional content.
5. Do Not: Target Strictly-Moderated Subreddits
Because we have done so many campaigns for clients in our niche, we know some subreddits are too strictly moderated for any promotional comments at all.
Different subreddits have different rules for who can post and what content is acceptable, so take the time to get to know the law of the land for each forum you’re considering targeting.
Subreddits with lots of users and posts to filter – such as r/nonprofits, for instance – may be stricter about deleting comments that are potentially promotional than others.
So if you try commenting something and your comment gets immediately deleted, don’t try again, and delete anything from that subreddit off your list of posts you’re targeting. If you keep commenting about the same business from different accounts, many subreddits will ban your business from being mentioned at all in the future.
What to Do Instead: Find Posts with “Clutter” at the Bottom
If there are posts in subreddits that are not archived, and you can see there are other promotional comments at the bottom, then that tells you that promotional comments don’t get deleted and that post is still open.
Comment on those posts– the ones that are important, but still open to new comments. Then, get everyone else on your team to upvote your comment so it moves away from the clutter and up to the top of the comment section.
6. Do Not: ONLY Comment on Posts That Are Already Ranking
Some of the posts you target are already on the SERP– they will make up a big part of your Reddit plan. But sometimes, opportunities come up organically: someone commenting on a subreddit asking about your brand. When that time comes, you will want to be ready.
What to Do Instead: Sign up for Alerts Any Time Your Brand Gets Mentioned on Reddit
When you start your Reddit campaign, sign up for F5Bot alerts for your most relevant keywords and your business’s name.
You will now be alerted any time there is a new Reddit post regarding your product or service. This is where Reddit accounts with no promotional comments will come in handy.
When you get an email about a post related to your business, alert the team and have everyone comment positively about the business.
This will only happen once in a blue moon (unless you have a huge company that gets mentioned and discussed on Reddit frequently), but when it’s time, it’s important to comment quickly so that it seems natural.
7. Do Not: Abandon Your Comments After You Make Them
Not only do you need to continually check up on old comments to make sure they haven’t been deleted, but you should also use all of your other accounts to upvote the comments from your campaign.
If you are commenting on a post that is not archived, not strictly moderated, and appears on a relevant search engine results page, then you will likely not be the only person leaving a promotional comment.
You will probably see other businesses promoting their services. But most of them will not have any upvotes.
Aside from blending in with the crowd, your comment could also be removed or replied to over time – all reasons to keep tabs on what you’ve posted and its current status.
What to Do Instead: Upvote, Then Check in Periodically
Stand out by getting everyone on your team to upvote your important comments.
Sign up for Reddit notifications so you find out when someone replies to you.
Check in on comments every few months to see if they’ve been deleted.
When comments do get deleted, don’t comment on that same post again, but instead find another valuable post on your list from a different subreddit and create a new comment there.
The Ultimate Pro-Tip: Talk to Inkless About Reddit SEO!
Ready to join forces with us and learn how we can help you implement a Reddit strategy for your business?
With more than 200+ access stories, Inkless is the best SEO Reddit agency based in the U.S. Book a call with our team today to start a conversation.
You have reached the end!
