How to Get Traffic from Reddit – The Definitive Guide

How To Get Traffic From Reddit – The Definitive Guide

Introduction to Driving Traffic through Reddit

Since you’re reading this article you are probably either a marketer, small business owner or just a creative guy who wants to understand better how to use Reddit to drive more traffic to his work. And you know that getting traffic from sites like Digg and Reddit (although Reddit is much better nowadays) can be effective and cost-efficient, if approached correctly. (just check these Reddit traffic statistics for 2014…)

The basic way of generating “free” traffic is the following – create something worth reading or viewing like a nice photo, a cartoon or a really useful article, add a small reference to your product or service and submit it as a link to Reddit. If it gets enough upvotes, it will stay on the first page long enough for you to get a nice chunk of traffic. More often than not, unfortunately, even high-quality articles get downvoted and thrown in the bin before anything happens.

In this article, we’ll talk about the basic rules, tactics and shortcuts required to make a successful submission and teach you how to get traffic from reddit more easily. Let’s start with a couple of things to take care of before submitting a link.

1. The Basics

Let’s look at the essentials of the best way to use Reddit and more specifically – how to use Reddit to drive traffic.

How To Get Traffic From Reddit – The Definitive Guide

1.1 Choosing the right subreddit

Choosing the right subreddit is crucial. In Reddit, a single niche can be served by multiple subreddits with similar purposes, but we want visitors interested in our target niche with strong buying intent, not just curious people and hobbyists. This is especially true for most of the small companies that don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars behind their back. Also, often smaller subreddits convert a lot better than bigger ones and are much easier to get into.

1.2 Reading the subreddit rules

Once the most appropriate subreddit is identified, spend the time and read the specific rules for that subreddit. Not reading them is the number 1 reason why most submissions get blocked – inappropriate content, wrong theme or use of elements forbidden by the subreddit itself, like for example – obvious self promotion. Note that aside from the general Reddit rules each subreddit has a different set of rules as well.

1.3 Manual and automatic penalties.

Some domains are trusted, others are not. There’s an algorithm that takes that into consideration along with the authority of the account making the submission – its age, activity, subreddit statistics and whatnot. If you post from a new account to a new domain, you can be sure that your submission will be silently filtered, meaning that it will appear as it’s there but it’ll not be. And you won’t get any traffic from Reddit if it gets filtered.

Manual penalties are applied by a moderator who’s supposed to catch whatever is not already caught by the automatic spam prevention system. Of course, almost no one holds them responsible so if a moderator decides he doesn’t like your submission – don’t ask what’s the problem.

How To Get Traffic From Reddit – The Definitive Guide

1.4 What you see is not what you get

The last important thing from this list is that once you submit your article nothing is what it seems in regards to your score. If no one’s upvoting your link, the chances are that it has been caught by the filter – either its upvoting is blocked or the link is gone alltogether. You can check this if you log off and try to find it in the subreddit. If it’s not there then it’s been completely removed.

The score is also not the actual score. Usually you have to wait a couple of hours in order to get the accurate number of upvotes for a submission. This is, of course, also done with the idea of making it harder for the marketers to manipulate the system. Instead, look at the position of the link because that’s what matters.

2. Tactics for successful submission

Now that we’ve covered the basics, it’s time to give you some specific tips on how to get massive traffic from Reddit successfully.

How To Get Traffic From Reddit – The Definitive Guide

2.1 The bigger is not always the better

The more the visitors in a subreddit, the higher the chance to get a manual block. The reason of course is that the biggest subreddits are the most targeted by the venture-funded horizontal companies, which means more spammers and marketers trying to sell their products through hidden advertisements. Playing with the masses also means a lot of upvotes. For example, if you want to get your submission on top of /r/funny, you’ll need a couple of thousands upvotes to do that.

2.2 Be subtle with the advertising

Most subreddits decline promotional content, so make sure that you are subtle enough when navigating the visitors to your landing page. The best way to do that is usually through a non-obtrusive lead generation email collection form.

2.3 Post from established accounts

Account age and authority matters both for penalty prevention and for ranking. A submission with a smaller score can get on top just because of the account authority level.

2.4 Don’t overpost to the same domain

That’s a clear indication that you’re trying to game the system. Your account should have an organic submission profile just as your site in Google’s eyes.

2.5 Choose the right timing

If you submit during the peak hours, I promise you your link won’t get near the top. The reason is that the top places are already taken by older submissions for the day. The Reddit traffic by hour report tool can help you with that.

How To Get Traffic From Reddit – The Definitive Guide

2.6 Don’t assume your link will get on top just because it’s good

Whether or not your link gets on top depends on an algorithm. If you post the best article from a new account, at the wrong time, or if the moderator is just not in the mood – you will have wasted your time. Or maybe someone just didn’t like it and asked his friends to downvote it for him. Or your competition bought upvotes from us (or accounts) and your link got blown away.

Having good content helps, but it’s not a guarantee for getting on top and driving traffic. If you really want to get quality traffic from Reddit, start thinking out of the box.


Liked our article on how to get traffic from Reddit ? I hope so ! If you are still new to Reddit, don’t forget to read our How to Use Reddit tutorial as well. You’ll find some extra related information there.

Cart