Reddit is home to thousands of active communities discussing every topic imaginable.
With over 430 million monthly active users, it’s one of the top 20 websites in the world.
This makes Reddit a goldmine for keyword research.
You can uncover valuable SEO opportunities by analyzing popular Reddit posts and comments.
In this guide, you’ll learn:
- Why Reddit is a useful keyword research source
- How to manually find SEO keywords on Reddit
- Tools to automate Reddit keyword extraction
- Tips to optimize content with Reddit keywords
Let’s dive in!
Why Use Reddit for Keyword Research?
Reddit users are highly engaged, contributing extensive user-generated content daily.
There are over 130,000 active subreddits covering literally any topic or industry you can imagine.
This makes Reddit an invaluable source to understand user intent for all types of keywords:
- Informational — People share expertise by explaining concepts or answering questions.
- Commercial — Product discussions reveal buyer keywords and what people look for.
- Navigational — Brand mentions indicate good link-building or partnership opportunities.
Some key advantages of Reddit keyword research:
- Real-Time Insights — New slang, trends, and changes in language happen on Reddit first. Stay on top of what words people actually use.
- Volume of Data — Millions of comments and posts created every day across every niche. An endless supply of keyword ideas.
- Understand Intent — The way people talk about topics shows what problems they want to solve and how they search.
- Competitor Mentions — See what brands and websites get discussed positively to identify good backlink targets.
Overall, Reddit provides direct access to your audience’s interests and pain points. This level of insight is incredibly valuable for matching content to search intent.
Now let’s explore exactly how to extract keywords from Reddit manually.
How to Manually Find Keywords on Reddit
Reddit’s built-in search makes finding keywords easy. Just enter a relevant query and analyze the results.
Here is a step-by-step process:
Step 1: Identify Relevant Subreddits
Start by finding subreddits related to your niche. More members and engagement makes for better data.
Pro Tip: Check the sidebar for suggestions of related communities to join.
For example, if you sold dog products, these would be good subreddits:
- r/dogs — 2.7 million members discussing dogs
- r/dogs_getting_dogs — 135K dogs and their pups
- r/puppy101–311k members talking about puppies
Step 2: Search For Keywords
Now run test searches to see what keywords people use when talking about topics related to your business.
Some good queries:
- “best [product]” — Discover popular products people recommend
- “[brand] vs [brand]” — See what competitors get compared
- “how to” — Finds informational search questions
- “[keyword] review” — Get product feedback and keywords
Step 3: Analyze Comments and Posts
Pay attention to the number of upvotes, comments, and overall engagement on posts.
More community interaction indicates a popular and valuable result.
Also scan through comments for key phrases and words that come up frequently when people discuss a topic. These likely align closely with search intent.
Here’s an example “best dog toys” search:
This post has 14 upvotes and 42 comments indicating good engagement.
Scanning comments we see words like “soft toys”, “durable”, “chew”, “indestructible” come up a lot when people describe ideal dog toys in this subreddit.
Step 4: Compile Keyword Ideas
As you search Reddit and analyze posts/comments, compile keywords and phrases in a spreadsheet. Include notes on relevant metrics like upvotes and comments.
Over time, this process will build up a great list of validated keyword ideas to target in your content.
Now let’s look at some tools that can automate finding keywords on Reddit.
Reddit Keyword Research Tools
Manually analyzing Reddit results has limits in scale and efficiency. Thankfully, tools exist to extract keywords from Reddit automatically.
Here are 3 top options:
SEMrush Organic Research
SEMrush’s Organic Research reveals the top keywords any domain ranks for. This includes subreddits.
To use it for Reddit keyword research:
- Enter a subreddit URL like reddit.com/r/dogs
- Set location to United States
- Click search
You’ll then see data on the subreddit’s rankings and traffic. Most importantly it lists all the keywords the subreddit currently ranks for.
You can filter and export these keywords for further analysis.
It’s an easy way to pull hundreds of Reddit keyword ideas in seconds.
Ahrefs Site Explorer
Ahrefs’ Site Explorer shows any site’s ranking keywords — including subreddits.
To use it:
- Enter subreddit URL like reddit.com/r/dogs
- Make sure domain type is set to “Subdomain”
- Click search
In the results, click “Top Pages” to see all keywords.
Export them or click each one to see keyword details like volume and difficulty.
Reddit Search on Google
An underutilized tactic is searching Reddit directly on Google.
Use operators like “site:” to filter specifically for Reddit results.
For example:
site:reddit.com/r/dogs best toys
This displays all Reddit results for that subreddit mentioning “best toys”.
You can scan through for keyword ideas and also see what posts rank well.
Other operators like “intitle:” also work well to find keyword-rich Reddit threads.
Pro tip: Use SocialRanker as part of your Reddit marketing strategy. This Reddit SEO tool gives you suggested queries based on your business, products, and searches on Reddit with Google for you!
Optimizing Content with Reddit Keywords
The final step is optimizing your content for the best keywords uncovered on Reddit.
Here are some tips:
- Match keywords to pages based on subject relevance. Don’t force a keyword onto an irrelevant page.
- Analyze keyword difficulty before targeting. Easy wins first before trying competitive keywords.
- Include keywords naturally in headings (H2, H3 tags) and image file names. Don’t over-optimize.
- Write helpful, engaging content that answers the question or solves the problem suggested by the keyword.
- Include internal links to related content that also uses relevant keywords.
- Update old underperforming content with new keywords found on Reddit. Quick wins!
The goal is providing content tailored to search intent.
Reddit insights help you understand the “why” behind queries.
Optimize pages to specifically answer and solve those user needs.
This content will better resonate with searchers, earning higher rankings and conversions.
It’s your turn
Reddit represents the world’s largest focus group with authentic insights into user intent. Keyword data sourced from Reddit conversations will make your content stand out.
So next time you’re doing keyword research, don’t forget to search Reddit too!
It’s time to take Reddit marketing seriously, try SocialRanker free today!
