Is Reddit blogging for you?
Reddit has a notorious reputation for considering bloggers spammers.
Is it possible to generate blog traffic from Reddit?
Letâs find out!
Do you want to get free blog traffic?
Do you want massive blog traffic or instant blog traffic?
What if I told you that you could have both but not at the same time?
If you had to pick between massive blog traffic to your site or instant but smaller traffic, which would you choose?
This article will explain how you can have one or the other using the social bookmarking site Reddit.
Redditâs History
Reddit started just under ten years ago and has over a hundred million visitors monthly. The site is named Reddit due to a play on words. Â Since people use Reddit to curate their articles, they say that they read the article; they read it, so the site is called Reddit.
Redditâs Value for Your Blog
In March of 2014 Reddit boasted 114 million visitors from 190 countries. That many people could seriously boost your page views.
[bctt tweet=âReddit has a reputation for having the potential to refer massive amounts of traffic to your blog.â]According to Quicksproutâs Neil Patel, Reddit is considered such a good site, that if two people vote for your link there, you will have a link into your site from Reddit, a site with a low Alexa score, which will increase your SEO ranking.
You might ask why you wouldnât have a link into your site if someone clicks your link over at Reddit. In a recent post, my guest author discussed no follow and do follow links. Â No follow links means Googleâs bots wonât be crawling; Google wonât even know about the link. Â If you get two or more votes, Google will then let their bots crawl your article, and your SEO will rise.
Apparently, people tried to spam by adding many articles to Reddit in hopes of adding to their siteâs SEO value, so Reddit put this block in place. Â It goes away as soon as your article gets two or more votes.
Redditâs Value for You
Reddit is not a link-dropping site. Â You donât post your blog link like you would at a Facebook group or linky party and hope people click on your link. Â On the contrary, Reddit frowns on self-promotion.
I went to the AskReddit subreddit to start a new thread and post a question, and I was not even able to use the pronoun âIâ in my question. Â The site is that leery about self-promotion.
You can post your blog articles in one of two ways, with links (called a link post) or without links (called a text post). Â When I tried to post two different articles with links back to my blog within a short time of each other, I was not allowed to. Â I got a notice saying I needed to wait five more minutes before posting another article.
Its primary value comes to you in other ways:
- First and foremost, Reddit is a forum where like-minded people, called Redditors, come together. Â They find each other by joining smaller communities within the larger Reddit community. Â Those smaller communities are called subreddits.
According to recent statistics, there are 638,959 subreddits for you to choose from, and there is no limit to how many of these smaller Reddit communities you can join.
- The subreddits are forums where people post questions in threads and people respond. Therefore, Reddit is a great place to go if you need help with any aspect of blogging (or seemingly anything at all). Â Just find the relevant Reddit subreddits and start a thread with your question. Actually, if you want to get noticed on Reddit, starting comment threads is a great way to do it.
- You can get immediate traffic from Reddit if you post a link post. Â On days I want a page view boost, I go to Reddit, post my link, and seemingly within minutes, I see traffic on my stats page coming from Reddit.
- You can get followers on Reddit on your other forms of social media.  For example, the Twitter subreddit allows users to promote their Twitter accounts on Friday.  Just find the âstickyâ labelled Follow Friday to post your Twitter name.
 Reddit Tutorial
- Go to https://www.reddit.com/ and make an account. Be careful.  If you want to change the name of your account later on, you canât. You would have to start over. You will be able to choose subreddits that interest you.
- To post a link to your blog post, decide if you want to post an article with or without a link.
You can link a post with a link to your blog or a text post.
You are looking at the inside of the app subreddit.  When you get there, you can search for a new subreddit, or submit a post with or without links.
- In contrast to other content curation sites, once you post your link, Reddit works like a popularity contest. If redditors vote for your post, it increases in visibility.
The administrators of Reddit think if their users vote for it, your article must have merit, and they will let their other users find it easier. Â However, lobbying for votes is considered spammy.
Voting on Reddit makes a post rise in visibility.
By looking at the screenshot, you see I was in the app subreddit. I posted my Dropbox article there. Â Notice the 1 is in orange right under the orange arrow. This means someone voted for my Dropbox article. Â As a result, my post is the fifth most visible in the subreddit, right under #4 which got two votes.
The down arrow works the opposite way. Â If someone presses the down arrow, it will be hard for your post to rise in visibility.
Note: I have received traffic from Reddit to page views that received zero votes. Â People didnât vote for my article, but they still clicked my link.
Reddit Strategy
According to Twelve Skipâs Pauline Cabrera, you should do the following:
- Find some BIG, general subreddits you can fit into. Sub Reddits show how many users they get, so look for something in the 10âs of thousands.
- Find a few small, relevant subreddits you can fit into. These can be very niche with only a few thousand members.
This Reddit screenshot shows how many members are in the Big SEO subreddit.
Reddit Warnings
- Different subreddits have different rules.
As mentioned, Reddit is not a link-dropping site. Â The moderators want to see reciprocity on your part. Â When they see you interacting in their subreddits, you will get karma credits. (Karma, like you have done a good deed by participating.) Once you have enough karma credits, you can post your link.
For example, I tried posting a productivity post of mine in the Productivity subreddit, and look at the comment I received as a result:
Hello! Unfortunately, since your account has less than 10 combined karma⊠your post was automatically removed.Â
I experimented with different subreddits to see if I couldnât see better results.  Since I have many Pinterest articles, I linked my articles in the Pinterest subreddit, and started getting immediate traffic from the site, and my older posts that I linked there started getting immediate page views once I did.
I put my Evernote article in the app subreddit, and I donât recall having any problems there either.
You might wonder how to get points so they let you post your articles. Â Actions get you points such as starting and responding to a comment thread.
- David DiGiovanni of Search Engine Journal expresses concerns about bloggers posting articles with direct links to their blog. Â Reddit is so against self-promotion, Redditors could become skeptical that you are only there to self-promote. Â He advises putting snippets of your articles in the Submit Text Post box to generate interest.
Conclusion: Reddit Blogging
In conclusion, this post began by giving two options. Â On one hand, you could strive for page views from Reddit. Â If your experience is like mine, submit a link post. Â I received traffic to a variety of posts in different subreddits and almost instantaneously.
On the other hand, if you want to try to up the stakes and get massive traffic from Reddit, submit a text post.
Readers, before you go try your hand at Reddit, please share this article. Â Many people find Reddit confusing and steer away from trying it for that reason. Â If this gives any clarity at all, they may give it a try to increase their traffic.
What do YOU think about Reddit? Â It has a reputation of being confusing with all the rules and subreddits. Â Do you think you might try it? Â Have you already posted at Reddit? What were your experiences? Did you post a link post or a text post? I look forward to your views.
Related Post:
7 Best Sites to Buy Reddit Upvotes & Downvotes
Sources:
https://www.quicksprout.com/2015/06/18/how-to-get-your-slice-of-reddits-150-million-pageviews/
http://www.twelveskip.com/marketing/content-marketing/1384/places-promote-your-content
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