Hype around Google’s AI Overview SERP feature in the SEO industry is getting overblown. Sure, it’s new and AI is having a moment. And I’m sure we’ll see Google continue to integrate AI features into the search experience.
But there isn’t much for us there.
The same optimizations we’re making to our client’s sites to improve their rank and user experience will likely make their content more competitive in AI Overviews as well. For now, I don’t see any reason to make major changes to our strategy.
But there’s another SERP disruptor I can’t stop thinking about: Reddit. Admittedly, I’m not a big Reddit user. I made an account earlier this year to get the scoop on an SEO conference I was interested in. I was drawn to what seemed like unbiased advice from real people in place of the classic “Ultimate Guide to SEO Conferences in 2024” articles that dominate SERPs.
Turns out, I wasn’t the only one interested in this type of user-generated content (UGC).
Over the last 16 months, Reddit has been one of the biggest, if not the biggest, beneficiaries of Google’s Helpful Content updates. Organic traffic has exploded over 6x since last August.
Clearly, something has changed.
In this article, we’ll investigate how Reddit has become such a dominating force in so many SERPs. We’ll determine what Reddit’s growth tells us about Google’s priorities and what it wants from publishers. And most importantly, we’ll explore what we can learn from Reddit’s success and how we can shift our content strategies to do the same.
Is Reddit Appearing in SERPs More Often?
Yes.
Think back to the last few Google searches you’ve done. Have you seen Reddit in the top 10 results? Depending on what you’ve been looking for, you probably have. Reddit is especially prominent in consumer-driven, commercial searches, where a user is researching their options and finding a brand to purchase from.
Anecdotally, I know I’ve seen much more of Reddit in the past year than before. As an SEO consultant, I spend a lot of time looking at SERPs. Both professionally and personally, Reddit has infiltrated my search experience.
But here at Synapse, data reigns supreme, and in this case, the data backs up the anecdote. The number of keywords where Reddit ranks in the top 10 positions has grown over 360% to more than 75 million terms.
That means that users are seeing Reddit in their search results MUCH more often now than in the past.
What is Driving Reddit’s Growth?
It’s unlikely that Reddit has made any significant changes to its website structure, content structure, indexability, etc. With organic growth this remarkable, something else is at play. And the timing of Reddit’s growth aligns perfectly with the roll out of Google’s Helpful Content Updates.
Reddit’s growth in keyword rankings and organic traffic began in earnest in August 2023, the same month where Google rolled out a major Core Update. This type of algorithm update has been a prominent feature of Google’s product since the early days of the web. We usually see a Core Update roll out two or four times per year, with some shift in rankings across our clients each time.
Reddit earned another, more significant bump in rankings in September 2023, following the rollout of a Helpful Content Update, and a third, even more intense increase with Google’s November 2023 Core Update.
As I researched this article, I came across a chart in SEMrush that really blew me away.
Not only is Reddit’s organic traffic rising, the new traffic is overwhelmingly non-branded. The site’s visibility in SERPs where the user didn’t specifically include “reddit” in their query has grown substantially—leaving us with yet another signal that Google is pushing Reddit’s content to new audiences.
A Brief Note on Helpful Content
In its ongoing quest to improve the search experience, Google has rolled out a series of algorithm updates specifically meant to prioritize content it deems “the most relevant, useful results” for a given query.
The first Helpful Content Update went live in August 2022. In the year that followed, two more major algorithm updates were pushed live that explicitly targeted helpful content improvements. In March 2024, Google announced that its Helpful Content ranking system was being integrated into its core product, meaning that future updates to the system would take place in the regular Core Updates.
At this moment, the Helpful Content ranking framework evolved into a core tenet of Google’s search experience. This focus on helpful content wasn’t going away, it was now at the center of everything Google had to offer.
Is Reddit Helpful Content?
The data above showing Reddit’s organic growth is pretty telling, but what is it about Reddit’s site structure that makes it so user- and Google-friendly? Let’s tear apart a Reddit post and see what we find.
First, it’s important to point out that while Reddit has grown its SERP visibility across the board, it’s most prominent in informational queries, especially those where the searcher appears to be looking for a review or recommendation.
Take the below search. Someone searching for “best gym for beginners” (which has an average monthly search volume of 1,000) is likely ready, or almost ready, to sign up for a membership. This is a high-value, low-funnel searcher—and gyms know it: the paid search ad space for this query is full of popular gym brands.
But perched right there at the top of the organic results: Reddit.
Look at that SERP listing! The community, r/GYM, is shown in the SERP, as is the number of comments on the post and how long it’s been live. Plus, holy sitelinks! Google is making the research experience seamless for users:
Click here to see the 45 answers available to this question. Looking for something else? Check out these four related posts (with their publish dates) from different communities that are super relevant to you and your search.
I’ve never seen an organic SERP listing for any other site look like this. Not only is there a ton of super helpful information for our prospective gym-goer, the result takes up half of my screen.
And the cherry on top, the answers I’ll find when I click into this listing are written by real people. Not some publisher or brand with an angle, answering my question and selling me on their membership. These are people like me offering advice based on their experience or real-life expertise.
Once our searcher clicks into this post, they’re met with a series of human-written answers tied to profiles with real people behind them. Reddit and Google are able to track which communities these users are posting in, building a case for each user’s authority to comment on specific topics.
Maybe the author of the top-ranked answer to the question on this post often comments on posts in the r/GYM community. Maybe they post a lot of their own workout content to help new gym-goers. These are all authority signals tied back to the user’s profile.
Plus, the platform has user engagement built in. Other users can upvote an answer, a vote of confidence and signal of their trust in a response. Users can also comment on and continue the conversation on the post.
Wait a second: experience, expertise, authority, trustworthiness… Sound familiar?
Reddit and E-E-A-T Signals
Reddit is a perfect example of what Google wants from a top-ranked page. Truly helpful content comes from an unbiased, third-party human. Sure, brands can write this, too, but it’s a lot harder to avoid bias when your article’s goal is to drive conversions.
Google hasn’t changed what it’s looking for. If anything, it realized that user-generated content on Reddit provides the really helpful, E-E-A-T content that it’s been looking for all along. Instead of prioritizing another “Ultimate Guide to…” article, Google’s choosing to show content based on real-life experience, from a platform that makes helpfulness a core tenet of its structure.
What Can We Learn from Reddit’s SEO Success?
“Great, what the heck am I supposed to do with the 10+ ‘Ultimate Guide to blah blah blah articles I just wrote?”
Listen, I love an Ultimate Guide just as much as the next guy. We might not beat Reddit with it, but based on our experience, it’s still a necessary piece of content to have on your site to have a chance to rank for a term. Especially one that is broad in nature. Heck, the SERP for that “best gym for beginners” query we were looking at earlier includes one!
But, there are some insights we can garner from Reddit’s success. The user engagement and authorship built into Reddit’s platform is replicable on brands’ blogs. Let’s start with the basics:
- Include the article’s author’s name in the header. Bonus points if the author is known in your industry or has a resume that supports their authority on your article’s topic.
- Create robust author bio pages that explain an author’s experience and expertise on the subjects they write about. Link to this page from every article they write.
- Open up comments on your articles. Yes, this may mean someone will need to weed out bots and irrelevant posts, but getting your readers involved is a huge engagement signal.
- Make it easy to share your blog articles. Not only will more eyeballs see your content when someone shares it to X, but you just got a clear engagement on the page.
- Prioritize internal links, they’re KEY! Reddit groups their posts by community (ex. r/GYM). How will you show Google (and your readers) which content is related?
Reddit’s rise isn’t concerning. They play by the same rules as the rest of us. The main difference: they were built for organic search success under a Helpful Content algorithm from the start.
I still work with my clients to develop really robust, helpful blog articles. And yes, I still recommend writing an Ultimate Guide to every keyword in our target list. But I also think it’s worth considering how we can make our client blogs more helpful and Google-friendly.
And for that, Reddit is the perfect template.
Interested in growing your page 1 organic visibility with an SEO strategy based on Reddit’s success? Get in touch with our team and learn all about the analysis that goes into our client strategies!
