Why You Need Quora and Reddit for SEO and Marketing in 2021

Quora and Reddit have been vastly underestimated by SEO and marketing professionals. Newsletter polls show that 67 percent of specialists don’t use these platforms in their promotion strategy. These specialists and digital marketers are definitely missing out with regard to enhancing brand awareness, driving relevant traffic and acquiring useful backlinks. 

Stay tuned, here is what your digital marketing textbook won’t tell you about Quora and Reddit!

The Importance Of E-A-T: Something Most of Us Seem To Forget

E-A-T is a significant ranking factor that Google introduced not so long ago. E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness. First, it was limited to Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) niches but nowadays, it’s taken into account far and wide.

Now, there are probably over a hundred different things that may have an impact on your E-A-T such as online reviews, social media activity or qualified blog authorship.

Yet, one of the most crucial is your brand’s online presence. Therefore, Reddit posts or Quora answers not only work well for brand awareness, but also increase trust. This is especially true when the content is coupled with links, but even linkless mentions can be beneficial.

What Makes Quora and Reddit Powerhouses for Marketing

• Both of these websites have a huge audience and belong to the top 100 most popular websites worldwide. Quora receives over 500 million visitors a month, while Reddit gets about 1.5 billion! Thus, if you approach it wisely, you can drive a lot of traffic to your website.
• There is a topic for everyone. There are hundreds of subreddits across different niches where you can contribute. Similarly, there are countless questions on Quora on all kinds of subjects where your expertise might come in handy.
• Both Quora and Reddit are known for their rigid content standards and high moderation level. Thoughtless self-promotion or spam will not go through easily unless it provides real value to the target audience.

Wait, But Where’s the Link Juice?

A lot of SEO specialists seem deluded and restrained from using these social platforms because the backlinks are mostly nofollow (read as not cool). Of course, we all want links inserted in guest posts on some powerful blogs, but what if I told you you need nofollow links too?

Here are a two reasons why:

1. It looks suspicious to search engines if your backlink profile is composed solely of dofollow links from authority blogs. Nofollow backlinks diversify your link profile, making it look more natural and credible.

2. It has already been confirmed on a number of occasions that these days Google treats nofollow links as “hints.” Therefore, those links still have a role to play. Take Wikipedia links as an example – they are always nofollow, yet you never hear that they are useless, right? Or, take a look at this: John Mueller from Google confirms that Quora links are not ignored by any means.

Back to University Years: Doing Research

Finding Questions on Quora and Searching for Relevant Subreddits on Reddit

It’s actually not as daunting as it sounds! Most likely, you already have a list of keywords that describe your business (you might have used it for SEO or paid ads). 

If you don’t, you can compile one very easily.

For example, if your niche is “gardening,” you can either use your common sense to write some synonyms/related terms or use any of the SEO tools that provide keyword suggestions (e.g Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, SEMrush, etc.)

Then you will have a list of terms like “home and garden,” “garden design” and “plants.”

You can take this list and find questions on Quora that mention these terms and answer them. Similarly, you can search for subreddits on these subjects and start contributing.

P.S. There are quite a few more steps on the way. If you find this process too tedious and time-consuming, you may want to outsource this task to a professional promotion service.

Searching for Questions To Ask

You can take a different route and ask thoughtful questions instead of answering them. In this case, you can use your knowledge and compile some questions that would stimulate the discussion among other people. And if you’re stuck, you can use tools like AnswerThePublic to see which questions are currently popular in your niche. 

This way you know for sure that those are popular questions people are actively discussing. Just don’t ask the same questions as this may come across as annoying. Rather, use those insights as a starting point.

An Alternative Route: Asking for Help

In our experience, posts, where you seek advice, work great, particularly on Reddit. Despite their straightforward nature, Reddit users are also happy to share their opinions. So whenever you ask for advice, you’ll get a lot of eyes on your post and get some valuable feedback too. The best thing is, you can mention your brand (or affiliation) openly if building a link is not your sole motivation.

For example: “Guys, I want to know your thoughts on the website I recently designed for my client. Please take a look at [your link].

Similarly, you can ask open questions on Quora – you don’t have to limit yourself to just answering questions.

Before You Start: Polish Your User Profile(s)

Remember, we are trying to build up brand trust and reputation here. Whether you’re posting content on your own or on someone else’s behalf, your account (or profile) should look trustworthy. At a minimum, you should have the following:

• Full name (for Quora) or clever username that you use frequently (for Reddit)
• Profile picture (use a real photo of yourself)
• Biography that highlights your education and experience (for Quora) or write a short story about yourself (for Reddit)
  

A Few Words About Karma (Reddit, not Buddhism)

Your profile karma is crucial when it comes to posting on Reddit. First of all, sometimes newcomers can’t even create a post in certain subreddits (due to their low karma score). Secondly, if there’s even a slight hint of promotion in your post and you have a low karma score, the chances of your post getting deleted have just risen to about 95 percent. Remember that you should be a neighborly and helpful presence first before you go on and tell people about your projects. Act like a salesman and your account will be shadowbanned. You won’t even know about it, because shadowban is a specific feature on Reddit. You will be able to post, but no one will be able to see your posts. Thus, moderation on Reddit is not only strict but also “hidden,” all to prevent spam, nonsense and self-promotion that holds no value.

Some Dos and Don’ts When Posting Replies on Quora

• Never, ever start with self-promotion: If your sole motivation is aggressively promoting your product, you won’t get very far. People like Neil Patel leverage Quora to drive traffic to their blogs because they are being helpful to other people.
• Format your answer to make it easy to digest: Don’t stick with plain text that’s hardly readable. Highlight some words, make use of lists/bullet points and include images when necessary.

• Don’t copy someone else’s content without mentioning it: Plagiarism is a big “no” in the Quora Content Guidelines. If you quote someone, make it apparent, although you should aim for unique content at all times.
• Link to your website in a natural way: As soon as you feel you can mention your website or try to “soft sell” your product, do it naturally. Either include your website URL as a “source” at the end of your post or reference it in the text – just try not to be too salesy.

• Reference high-authority sources: Make it clear that you’ve done your bit of research and are not just extracting information from the top of your head (unless you share your personal experience). Don’t just reference your website; instead, you can try linking to Wikipedia articles, helpful YouTube videos and any other material that might help to answer the user’s question.
• Don’t hunt for links too much: It’s not necessary to link your website in every single post. Sometimes you should mention it without a link, and sometimes you don’t need to mention it at all. Enhancing your trust and reputation in the eyes of Google does not always come with a number of links.

And a Few Dos and Don’ts for Reddit

Let us not repeat ourselves too much, as most of the advice given above is also applicable to Reddit (and to pretty much every online community). Yet, there a few points left that need to be stressed.

• Don’t try to sell people stuff: Okay, this is a repetition, but there’s a noteworthy remark here. “Soft selling” your product on Quora is quite commonplace and thus tolerated by other community members, whereas on Reddit… Oh boy, don’t even get me started. Your best bet is to mention your product/service without pushing anyone to take action. Otherwise, the chance of your replies getting deleted rises enormously.
• Blend in with the subreddit audience: Don’t try to look too smart, just play it cool. If the audience of a particular subreddit sends memes and uses slang or jargon, then you should do the same.
• Be aware of haters: Let’s just say that Reddit is well-known for its fearless and straightforward community members. You will definitely encounter toxic people who disapprove of everything you do (and sometimes accuse you of even being born). This is something you just need to be aware of and accept without aggression. In the end, haters gonna hate; potatoes gonna potate.

To Wrap It All Up

Both Quora and Reddit can bring lots of value to your SEO and marketing campaigns. The key here is to go with the flow and not rush with self-promotion. Certainly, spreading the word around your brand and especially building links on these platforms is challenging. It requires a lot of time, human resources and patience.

If you don’t have those or simply want to outsource this goal, you should definitely consider Quora and Reddit promotion service. In this case, everything will be done for you, and you can focus on things that matter more to you and your business.