What to do about Google's reddit habit?

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining The SERP's Up podcast. We're pushing on some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by the amazing, the fabulous, the incredible, the uncompromising, but in a good way, Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter.

Crystal Carter:

Hello, internet people.

Mordy Oberstein:

Uncompromising on your SEO values and your humanity is what I meant.

Crystal Carter:

That's right. Upvote for that.

Mordy Oberstein:

Beat me to this. Beat me to this. I guess that's karma for you.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, oh, oh. Well, I'm sure if we can make a thread about it or something.

Mordy Oberstein:

Ooh. Somebody, by the way, commented on social media, I love how you all hint at the topic before you actually get to it, which we're doing right now.

Crystal Carter:

As if the person who's listening to the podcast hasn't actually read the title of the podcast-

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, it's possible.

Crystal Carter:

Is it possible?

Mordy Oberstein:

No, that's totally possible.

Crystal Carter:

It's cool.

Mordy Oberstein:

If you're the regular listener... I listen to this sports podcasts every day, I don't look at the title, I'm, like, oh, I just keep going.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, it's all good. Do you know what, somebody was like, oh, I summarized your podcast with ChatGPT? I'm like, you're missing the entire point.

Mordy Oberstein:

I know. I saw that.

Crystal Carter:

I'm like, what?

Mordy Oberstein:

You lose all the flavor.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, right, right. It's like saying-

Mordy Oberstein:

You come for the insights, but you stay for the entertainment.

Crystal Carter:

It's nice. You're missing the vibes, guys. People who are listening to the podcast, you're vibing with us. We're all vibing together. It's like a whole SEO vibe. It's important.

Mordy Oberstein:

That AI cannot replicate at all.

Crystal Carter:

No, no. We're definitely real people. This is-

Mordy Oberstein:

We're beyond AI. It's more like Reddit for your ears. Okay. The SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter search site each and every month at wix.com/seo/learn/newsletter, but where you can also use our Zapier integration to do things like post a new event from your Wix studio website to a subreddit automatically. This as this week, in case you haven't gotten the hints, we're talking about the problem on the SERP with Reddit. Well, I don't know if it's a problem. Who knows? Because I read it somewhere that perhaps there's too much Reddit on the SERP. I can't recall where I read it, but I did read it or read it somewhere. You know I'm going to keep making that joke the entire time now.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's in the stars, I read it. Sorry. Okay. That's right. We're taking up the abundance of Reddit on the SERP and what Google should perhaps do about it from the reason why Google has gone Reddit to how it all to LLMs and how to address the reason why Reddit is on the SERP with complaints about Reddit on the SERP. And to help us solve this complex problem, joining the podcast this week is you all.

We're going through the comments y'all have left on this issue across the wider social media universe, and we'll also chat with none other than Ross Simmonds about the future of Reddit and how marketers can really leverage it. And of course, we have your snappies of SEO news and who you should be following on social media like Reddit, I guess for more SEO awesomeness.

So forgo any preconceived notions about forums being at the forefront of the SERP as we attempt to foresee the future of forum formulations on the results page and how it might foreshadow wider marketing trends on this the 85th episode of the SERP's Up podcast. Please forgive me.

Crystal Carter:

That was formidable.

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you. Thank you. It's also like how many dad jokes can I possibly make in one intro?

Crystal Carter:

I think that's kind of fine. We're talking about Reddit, there's a lot of dads on Reddit. There's also a lot of other folks on Reddit. There must be a dad joke Reddit, right?

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm sure. Yeah. No, there's definitely got to be a dad joke Reddit, right?

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. There's got to be, I'm sure.

Mordy Oberstein:

There's definitely inappropriate joke Reddit, so there has to be a counterbalance to that.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, I mean, basically all the folks that I know that spend a lot of time on Reddit basically go and look for the worst things on the internet on Reddit.

Mordy Oberstein:

We'll get into this because we already recorded the section with Ross before recording this section to drop the fourth wall, and I am telling you, I made some heavy comments about my opinions about Reddit.

Crystal Carter:

Ross is a great person to speak to because Ross has come at this from a very strategic point of view. Because I think some people go to Reddit with a lot of feels like you're talking about, but he's only forever approached it from a strategic point of view, from a, how can we leverage this traffic? How can we engage these audiences? And I think that that's a really, really intelligent way to think about it. So grateful to Ross for joining us for that session, and y'all are for a real treat because he's got nothing but gems.

Mordy Oberstein:

Absolutely. Okay, so let's get started because there's a lot to cover and why we're talking about this is basically because there's an abundance of Reddit results on Google, at least at the time of this recording. I would imagine it'll still be that way by the time this episode actually is released. But I want to start at the beginning because in the beginning there was content and it was good. Humans consumed printed content on pages made of paper of all kinds, cardstock, A4, glossy, and it was good. But then came the machines and humankind deteriorated into a black hole of five ways to and 10 best things to, and it was not good.

Then in 2020, a new day dawned on the horizons of the web when Google announced passage ranking said to impact 7% of search queries, and it was meh. Not really that impactful, not really that big of a deal, but all kidding aside, the story does, I think begin with passage ranking where Google said, "Very specific searches can be the hardest to get right"...

Or maybe I'm quoting Barry, Wait, am I quoting Barry? I think I'm quoting Barry quoting Google. No, no, I'm not quoting Barry, I'm quoting Google. So Google said, "Very specific searches can be the hardest to get right since sometimes a single sentence that answers your question might be buried deep in a web page." And this is already years ago, "we've recently made a breakthrough in ranking and are now able to not just index web pages, but individual passages from the web." They don't actually mean index, they mean rank actual passages from the web. "By better understanding the relevancy of specific passages, not just the overall page, we can find that needle in a haystack information you're looking for."

And this is the first time where Google basically said outright, we want to get past the crap that's out there on the web and reward creators with real expertise who are talking about very specific things that answer very specific questions. And Google's been on this quest for... what, we're in 2024. 4 years.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

Google's been on this quest for four years and we haven't exactly gotten there. But then in November 2023, Google came and started to talk about hidden gems, which is to be determined. We're not there yet in terms of seeing the impact of the hidden gems, but Google wrote in November of 2023... Google or no, now I'm quoting Barry. Now I'm quoting Barry, quoting Google. Barry wrote, "Google has rolled out ranking improvements aimed at showcasing more content from social media, blog posts, forums, and more that share personal insights and experience." This is the hidden gems announcement Google made back in May 2023, but this update is not part of the helpful content updates system, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada.

Google's has announced that they're trying to find ways to reward personal experience, real expertise. Kind of what they were talking about with the passage ranking thing, but much more formalized. And they've added this to the core algorithm, and this is where I think Reddit on the SERP was born. Google wants to reward specific answers that have actual expertise based on actual firsthand knowledge and firsthand experiences, but they don't have the content to do it.

Most web content, most blog posts are not taken from a first-person experience point of view. If I'm writing about how to create a SEO report for your clients. My default is not going to be, let me tell you my personal experience with my personal clients. I'm going to write a very stoic, generic, almost like cold post about the best ways to create a SEO report for your clients. So there's not a lot of content out there that's taken from that first-person, first-experience point of view. So Google went a little bit too far down the social media rabbit hole, particularly with the Reddit rabbit hole because they don't have anything else. And I think that's how we got here. And that's why there's so much Reddit showing up for so many queries.

Crystal Carter:

I think it's important to remember that Google has bought into Reddit. They've invested in the company and having access to their database and things like that. And I think the other thing that's important to think about is when you're talking about the passage ranking, one of the things that's really important to that, and I think that was at Search On that they announced that they were doing passage ranking. And the thing that's really important about that is that it also has to do with NLP.

So natural language processing and Reddit forums and all forums really are written in natural language because it's someone going, why is my plant dying? I've tried feeding it with this fertilizer, I've tried moving it to this window, and I don't understand why my Monstera plant is struggling. I don't understand. And then someone goes, oh, I had a Monstera that was like that, and it was like dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, and this didn't happen, and all that sort of stuff.

Or like mom blogs, we were talking about dad jokes, mom forums, places like Mumsnet in the UK for instance, are full of people being like, oh, I've been trying to get my kid to sleep for weeks and he's teething now. And somebody's like, oh yeah, well, my son did this and my daughter did that, and dah, dah, dah, dah. And all of those things are written in natural language, and I think that that's really important to think about because of the bots, right? Because of all the AI content, this is essentially, forum content is kind of a foil to that.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. And that's why Google has to do it. They know they have to swing the other way a little bit. They can't be seen as a place where you're getting content that might be too generic because in an AI world, too generic is a real branding problem. And it makes sense, I agree with the notion that you should be going first-person experience on the SERP with content in general. I just think you're saying... and you're hitting on such a great point, but I don't want to spoil it yet because I want to get to it later about the forums and mom forums and SEO forums and all the other forums that are out there.

But you're right, they're trying to train the LLMs on this stuff. I think that, by the way, as a separate point, training large language models on places like Reddit I think is problematic at best because I'm not sure you're always getting an unbiased view of whatever it is that you're looking to understand from a place like Reddit.

Crystal Carter:

So one of the things that's interesting about Reddit is the demographics of Reddit. The demographics of Reddit are very much swinging in the sort of realms of, it's very male, it tends to be fairly young, and that's something that it's real challenge. For instance, if you're talking about mom blogs, if you're talking about the experiences of moms and stuff, what a 20-year-old boy... not a boy, I'm sorry, my apologies, what a 20-year-old young man has... I'm showing my age-

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm a man.

Crystal Carter:

I'm showing my age. I'm an old lady, I'm sorry. What a 20-year-old has to say about kids teething or something is going to be different from what somebody who's had three children and is maybe in their 30s, 40s, et cetera is going to say about that. And I think that it's a real challenge with some of those topics because there are biases within certain platforms and also certain platforms are going to lead themselves to certain personality types. I've heard issues that people have had with Reddit where people are kind of mean, which will mean that some people won't go to those kinds of spaces.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, totally.

Crystal Carter:

Similarly, a place like Pinterest is going to have a different kind of vibe. And so if there were leaning into Pinterest, that would have a different kind of effect on the kinds of information that we're showing on the SERP. Whereas if you're talking about gaming, Reddit's a great place.

Mordy Oberstein:

That might be a great place, I agree.

Crystal Carter:

That's a great place to get information about gaming, but for some topics, it's not great. And so I think Google's trying to patch this gap, but I think that one of the tricky things with Reddit is that demographically speaking, they're going to miss a lot of topics that Reddit just hasn't covered because it just hasn't really necessarily connected with those topics. It's also very American, for instance.

Mordy Oberstein:

Truth. And that I think is sort of the problem. Look, Google has this fire hose from Reddit, they have direct access to it, so they're going to use the Reddit. I think it ends up, you need to create a new incentive cycle in order to create the incentive for people to say, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to start a forum, or I'm going to create a microblog, or I'm going to start writing in first-person based on first-person experiences and pivot the entire tone and the entire style and the entire way of writing my content on my actual blog.

And then incentive really isn't there yet. Google did announce the structured data markup for forums, and smart people, like Aleyda Solis took advantage of as a signal, like Google does want more forum first-handed content, and if they only had good forums, they would pull that content into the server. Which what I'm saying, they don't really want to pull Reddit all the time. They do want to pull other forums, they're just not there yet.

Crystal Carter:

Well, I think that this is interesting because Mark Williams-Cook, who's a great person to follow online if you're interested in SEO so do you follow Mark, one of the things he was like, he was saying he's like, is this 2008? Again, because Google was way big into forums since day dot.

Mordy Oberstein:

Right, it almost is in a way.

Crystal Carter:

And it always has been. And there's a lot of forums. For instance, like Mumsnet, there's a World of Warcraft forum, there are forums for gardening, there are forums for... I follow Money Saving Expert in the UK. They've got a great forum on things like credit cards and loans and mortgages and all that kind of stuff. And people going, oh, is that worth getting that mortgage? Should I get this account? Is it worth paying the extra for that account? And people just discussing all of that stuff. And that content is round.

So I think it's also a question of what tools Google has to access them. And I think that's why you mentioned passage ranking. If they have better tooling for understanding that content, that's really important. I think also, there's a lot of websites that don't even index their UGC stuff. So comments underneath blogs for instance, a lot of people don't index those, but whereas if you look at the reviews on Amazon for instance, not only do they index those, they've got separate pages dedicated specifically for those, which is going to give you that UGC, which is going to give you that sort of forum experience, because they're very forum-esque, like, is this vacuum cleaner good? And people are like, nah.

Mordy Oberstein:

You're right. It is a re-circling of that kind of content. I think it's a different take on that content and in a new way. I'll go back to Aleyda Solis, she created a forum called chat.seofomo.co, which by the way is on Wix. There's a little plug there. She created a forum where people can ask and answer SEO questions, and there's really good information there. And by the way, I actually asked this question on that forum just to prove the point of what should Google do about the Reddit issue. And I got a bunch of answers back really good answers back.

And this is the kind of content that I think Google should be showing on the SERP forums, and not just Reddit. And Aleyda Solis herself wrote back, "Sadly, Google is never able to evolve their own social platform to have firsthand access to that sort of UGC, user-generated content, and now needs to rely on third-party whose quality they don't control. It's tricky. Bigger UGC-focused platforms like Reddit or Quora might facilitate access or scale to obtain that sort of information. However, the level of spam/low-quality information in there can be non-trivial for certain topics."

She goes on to say, "This is something they need to identify how to filter or weight to avoid giving so much visibility due to their overall authority to overall UGC generalists with higher levels of spam and give more to niche-specialized one," meaning your point. That's I want to come back to your point, there needs to be more specialized forums like Aleyda's forum, like the mom forum, whatever forum, so they don't have to rely on Reddit all the time, but are much more like... Aleyda's moderating her forum. It's a higher level of control and quality, and it's a great point.

Crystal Carter:

Right. And I think that Aleyda's is a classic example and very similar to the money-saving expert one in that it's attached to a website that has high authority. So Aleyda's, it's a sub-domain of SEO fomo, and she runs a newsletter. People know that brand. People know what's going on there, and people know that Aleyda knows her stuff, right? And so then she's got this forum that's attached to that. Similarly, money-saving expert, he's a great advocate for lots of things, has a great website, and has a forum attached to that.

And so you're able to port those two things and say these two things are related, and Google can use the data that they have on the existing website to support how they place that forum in the SERP. And I think that that would create a better, more rich SERP experience because also in terms of people figuring out who's in charge of this and who's looking after this, and in the EAT, people can track that back to something that is more researched, more backed by general sources like you get from the web.

Because I'm also here for that content. Can we just say that? People are saying like, oh, we shouldn't have something that's just written by somebody. People say, oh, it is just written by some content writer. Well, a content writer is a skilled writer who can write something coherent and based on research from the web and from whatever, and that's important. That is valuable content, and there's a reason why it ranks. And sometimes I've been on forums before and they're just rambling stuff and it's a bunch of things where somebody says this is the answer, and it's clearly not, and somebody says it's not-

Mordy Oberstein:

No. That's why the moderation is such an important part of it, but I think there's no immediate answer to this question. It's a slow burn because there has to be an increase in the creation of these kind of forums and this kind of content. And in order for that to happen, you need to change an entire incentive cycle. Gary Kirwan from Traffic Think Tank wrote, "Unless they change their obvious KPI metric to surface X percent more diverse content from forums, this is here to stay and keep growing." And what he's basically, I think saying is Google says, okay, we need to have X percentage... they don't actually say this, but imagine they say, X percentage of results need to be from forums.

If Google's going to be very linear about that, then we're stuck with the Reddit for a long time, and I think in long term are dis-incentivizing forums from mom and pop forums from ranking. Because I'm not going to compete with Reddit. So I think they do need to just scale it back and find another solution and address the short-term dissatisfaction of not having that firsthand content with a longer actual substantial, long-term solution that can actually be sustainable.

Crystal Carter:

I think it's tricky because if you look at the demographic, the demographic is 74% men and 25% women. And 48% of users are from the United States, for instance. If you wanted to get more balanced information about whatever topic, that's not a balanced demographic of humanity. It's just not.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, by the way, Gianluca Fiorelli on Aleyda's forum said literally the same thing, he wrote, Reddit is very popular, but its popularity is not equally distributed worldwide. So what I fear and start seeing is Reddit shadowing the visibility of local forums that are more relevant for local audiences than Reddit.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. Yeah. I think this is a problem that you can't just patch with Reddit. So hopefully Reddit is a first step, and hopefully they'll be able to revive some of the forums and things that they've been looking at and that have been thriving for years. If you think about, is it WebmasterWorld or whatever, that's a forum that's been around for a long time, and that's a forum that's got a lot of... Google will have lots of information about the SERP on that, something that Barry references really regularly, Barry Schwartz. And I hope that this is first start of them engaging in more direct user-generated content. That's evidenced by the quality rater guidelines, which have a whole new section all about forums.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. Google is all in from the algorithm updates to those things, to the hidden gems, to we're assuming with Reddit, we know what they want. I do think, though, to that point, I know it's not Google's style and I understand why it's not their style, it's a separate conversation, I think they need to just come out and say it. We want to rank more forums. We don't want to rank just Reddit. Go out there folks and create really high-quality forums because we want to rank them. And that's the only way you're going to speed up this process, I feel like.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they've got some more schema stuff that they've been incentivizing in that way.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, but those are very backhanded signals. Unless you're again, super smart, like Aleyda's going to capitalize on that... by the way, another plug, Wix, Wix Studio, we automatically add a markup to your forum for you so you don't have to edit, it's there. Just saying, but unless you're really on the ball, really keeping on top of these things, you're not going to do it.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, I think if people start seeing the traffic, then people will start responding and hopefully it won't just be traffic to Reddit. And Quora's also getting a lot as well. I think people haven't been talking about Quora so much, but Quora's been getting a lot of traffic as well. So I think it's important that when people start seeing the signals, they'll start investing the time. I think the tricky thing is they're just relying on the goodwill of people to make content, and maybe they will, maybe they won't. And I think that that's one of the things that's tricky.

Mordy Oberstein:

We shall see. Now, again, I don't want to, I have issues. You have issues, we all have issues, and as we discussed, Reddit has many issues, many, many issues, but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water. In fact, don't throw out the bath water, just let it drain down because a baby can't fit down a drain anyway. You follow what I'm saying?

Crystal Carter:

I think it's a reference to before there were baths, like indoor plumbing-

Mordy Oberstein:

Like, why would you throw out the bath water?

Crystal Carter:

It's like a bath-

Mordy Oberstein:

Babies can't fit down drains.

Crystal Carter:

Baby baths are in a bucket. They're like a bucket.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, okay.

Crystal Carter:

That's what we're talking about-

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, okay, yeah. Okay. Okay. Now it makes more sense. I was like, why throw out the bath water? You just drain it. It never made sense to me.

Crystal Carter:

It's harder to throw. You can't throw your whole sink out the window.

Mordy Oberstein:

No. And why would you do it? Take buckets and throw out the bath water. Okay, you've gone way... Anyways, what I'm trying to say is, don't cast Reddit aside. Use it. Use it. And to help us learn how to best leverage and use Reddit, the social media platform we all know and love, now and in the future, special guests to one and only. Ross Simmonds, the founder of Foundation, a content marketing agency is here to join us as we take a look into the future of Reddit with a little segment we call Crystal's Ball. Welcome to SERP's Up, Ross. How are you?

Ross Simmonds:

Going on. I'm doing well, doing well. No complaints. Things are great in my world.

Crystal Carter:

Absolutely love it. I've been seeing you doing lots of video stuff online and lots of obviously content distribution and just always speaking absolute sense.

Ross Simmonds:

Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah, I'm pushing hard on the distribution thing right now. I've got a book coming out, so I'm definitely ramping up on the stories around distribution and how powerful it is. And yeah, I'm doubling down for the next little bit.

Mordy Oberstein:

You're one of the few consistent people that my social algorithm likes across all social media platforms, so that's a big kudos.

Ross Simmonds:

That is. I appreciate that. I'm glad. That means that I'm doing something right, hopefully. And as long as you don't click those little three dots and then unfollow or mute, I'm doing my job.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, no, no don't, follow Ross. The videos are great, by the way. You've been doing them for such a long time.

Ross Simmonds:

Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah, video's a lot of fun. It's one of those things that my nickname in high school was Shy Ross, so old me would've never pictured myself being okay with video content. So it's been an internal journey, let's say, to get comfortable with it, but it's been fun. The response has been great.

Mordy Oberstein:

Nice. So today, we're talking about the world's largest cesspool and how to succeed in it-

Crystal Carter:

Just jumping right in there.

Mordy Oberstein:

I don't really get into the world of this podcast and just-

Ross Simmonds:

There's no bias. You don't hate-

Mordy Oberstein:

No, I love-

Mordy Oberstein:

But, those who are still confused, I'm talking about Reddit, obviously. All kidding aside. So this is a good conversation for me because I'm somebody who has a hard time with Reddit. I have a hard time existing on Reddit, navigating Reddit, but you're saying it's a viable channel for people.

Ross Simmonds:

Yeah, I'm a big fan. I'm a big believer. I've been a Redditor for a long time.

Mordy Oberstein:

Convince me.

Ross Simmonds:

Yeah, and I'm going to try.

Mordy Oberstein:

Okay.

Ross Simmonds:

So here's the thing with Reddit, it's essentially a replication in my opinion of culture. And oftentimes people go down a path where they look at the holistic demographics and psychographics of Redditors and they put them all in one bucket. But what is oftentimes underestimated is the number of subcultures that exist within this massive platform that might skew towards one demographic, but there are subcultures within it that actually might look and seem a little bit more niche than the traditional internet.

So there are subreddits, for example, that are dedicated to small little communities and towns all over the world. For example, Halifax, which is where I'm from, small place in Nova Scotia, has a very popular subreddit dedicated to Halifax where there's thousands of people who talk about things happening here. It's not reflective of the entire internet, but it is a very small group. Similar, there's a subreddit that is dedicated to futurology. And again, this might be a little bit more along the lines of what people would expect Redditors to look like, where it's a lot of kind of geeks talking about things in the future.

But then you'll also find that there's subreddits about very niche tasks. There could be one about dads learning to braid. And for me as a dad with two girls, and I would love to be able to do cornrows, I can go into a subreddit and learn from people who actually know how to do that, and they will show me tips and tricks on how to do cornrows.

So within this major massive community, there are pockets where I think brands can show up, businesses can show up and extract value, but also humans. And for me, I'm a big fantasy football guy. I love the NFL, I love the Philadelphia Eagles. So I go-

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, the second-best team in Pennsylvania.

Ross Simmonds:

Oh no, you're a Steelers fan. I have no comments on that one.

Mordy Oberstein:

Good luck with Kenny. Good luck.

Ross Simmonds:

That's fair. Good luck with two quarterbacks.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's also fair.

Ross Simmonds:

So you can go into these communities and you can learn a ton. And that's my typical advice for anyone is to first find your people because your people are probably on Reddit, they just might not be in a very popular subreddit that is followed by millions and millions of people. There are subreddits that are dedicated to regions, dedicated to things like barbecue, dedicated to plant-based food, dedicated to vegan food, you name it, there's subreddits associated with everything. All that said, is Reddit filled with chaos and things that you don't want to read and consume? No doubt about it, there are subreddits that are super toxic, super ridiculous, say offside things, are offside, and probably shouldn't be on the internet. That exists, too. But also, let's be real, so does culture. Culture has people who are that. So I think it's a blend. It's a reflection of society more than anything.

Crystal Carter:

So one of the things that comes out of that discussion there and some great fantastic points... just before we were talking about you've been in this space since 2016, you've written a book on it and that sort of thing. And I think that one of the things that comes out from that is sometimes it's a question of quality rather than quantity. So that it might be a question of finding something that is very, very, very relevant rather than something that is very, very, very popular. Is that an approach?

Ross Simmonds:

That's exactly it. Let's pretend for example that we are a coffee shop or a founder of a coffee shop and we're trying to launch our own coffee store. What I would advise that individual to do is not just become overwhelmed when they log into Reddit and see all of this noise of a viral post in the news and all of the chaos and all of these things, the going into a NSFW subreddit, just let's put on our blinders for a second and go in with an intention to say, okay, I'm starting a coffee shop, what are things that are relevant to me? Entrepreneurship, coffee, beans, best roast, maybe decor, location, things like that.

You can go into now, subreddits like r/Entrepreneur, which is a subreddit that is dedicated to entrepreneurs, and you can go into the search bar and you can type in coffee shops. And it's very likely that you are going to find a bunch of threads from entrepreneurs who have written about their experiences running or launching coffee shops.

So you can now learn very specific information and insight from someone... and this is where it gets very interesting, from someone who is not creating this content with the intention of capturing organic traffic and then selling you a course, but instead, their own sole intention was to get karma amongst a community where they would get thumbs up in votes. So they're giving as much value as possible. And I think that mechanism is what has made Reddit valuable.

People aren't yet... traditionally things have changed now that Google's announced that Reddit's a place for getting traffic and SEO and all that stuff. But traditionally, Reddit was built on in many ways, the buddy system where it's like, I'm going to give as much value to this community as possible, and I might get thumbs up, votes up, and that's going to be good. Or if I give something that's really valuable and now we're getting a little bit into the weeds, I might get Reddit Gold. And Reddit Gold is something that people can pay with their actual credit cards to give someone extra brownie points on the platform that gives them additional perks and benefits when they're using the tool.

Crystal Carter:

And I think that some of those interactive points are really, really important for a viable forum. If you look in the quality reader's guidelines, they've added additional information about forums specifically, and they talk about upvotes, they talk about interaction, they talk about things like that. And certainly when you look at other forum spaces, like even Google has product expert spaces. So people like Joy Hawkins is a platinum Google business profile expert. And I think that being able to engage with a community that has people that are that active from a business point of view, how important is that to businesses?

Ross Simmonds:

It's huge. I think right now almost in every industry, there's someone on Reddit who's asking a question or having a dialogue where you could show up and add value and it'd benefit your business. So that is on a local level. If you sell to a specific region, join your community subreddit because there's probably tourists that are commenting and asking questions like, Hey, when I have a trip to Pennsylvania, where should I eat? What should I do? And you as a business owner have a chance and an opportunity to respond there, add a bunch of value by referencing things that aren't you, but then also say, and also check out my restaurant. Check out my coffee shop, check out my gaming group. Whatever it might be that you offer, plug yourself in the mix.

Then in addition to that, there's two benefits that are going to happen. One, you've added value in that specific thread, but two, if the value was significant enough, it might start to show up in the SERP and Google might actually start driving traffic to that page when someone asks the question, things to do with kids in Pennsylvania or things to do with kids in New York, whatever it might be that you've answered. So that is what I always advise folks to do is, keep your eyes open for opportunities where questions exist that you can show up and answer those questions and add as much value as possible because you want those upvotes. And then once you get those upvotes, move on to the next one and continue to rinse and repeat.

Mordy Oberstein:

So three things. One, I retract my earlier statement a little bit. I do find that when I go to Google and Reddit shows up there, if it's something that I really want, that really first person valuable experience, I do get it. I also, by the way, find that sometimes I don't actually click. I just see the little snippet there. I got enough and I move on. That's a different point. Two, pro-tip on Reddit, do not go into a New York Mets subreddit on Bobby Bonilla Day and wish them a happy Bobby Bonilla Day. You'll lose all your karma, I know this from experience.

The third thing though is, how do you go about actually doing this? Reddit to me seems like very, very organic. They're going to find you out really quickly if you're just in there plugging away, commenting away just about your business. I want to make sure our audience understands what it actually means to engage and do this.

Ross Simmonds:

Yeah. I really appreciate that question because a lot of marketers go into Reddit and they think that they should just submit a bunch of links, plug their business, and then leave and call it a day, rinse, and repeat that strategy. I tried it and you get banned and blocked very quickly. I think I've been blocked already about 13 times in my life.

Crystal Carter:

You're on a list, man.

Ross Simmonds:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

Did you also wish the Mets fans Happy Bobby Bonilla Day?

Ross Simmonds:

No, I just plugged in a bunch of my links and hoped that they would get upvoted and it doesn't work that way. But I got banned from technology, from SEO, all the communities, ghost bans, all the bans, bye Felicia, I was kicked out. It was not fun.

Crystal Carter:

Did you come back with a hat, look, hey guys, it's me.

Ross Simmonds:

Exactly. Had the giant glasses. Yeah, I came back and I figured out the code to making this stuff work. And to your question, here's what it is, you don't want to go into these communities and spam. You want to go into these communities and add value, but two, you also have to show that you are a little bit of a human and not a robot. And what I mean by that is, go into other communities that might not be exactly your space and your niche and add some comments there, too.

So for every one post that I believe is business-oriented and going to potentially benefit me, I'll add two more posts that hopefully are community-oriented and will help people on Reddit in some different way, fashion, or form. It could be as simple as going into a sports subreddit and saying, my pick for next year's MVP is, Jalen Hurts. Cool.

Mordy Oberstein:

Not Kenny Pickett.

Ross Simmonds:

Yeah, it's not happening. I hope he doesn't start. That would be very stressful. But dropping a few of those little tidbits of just human combos tends to go afar in these communities because you have to build up a bit of karma to be able to actually publish frequently in some different spaces. So every subreddit has its own rules you have to follow and oblige by those rules. One other pro tip, every subreddit has an ego. So Redditors tend to have ego around their community, and if you're an outsider coming in, there can be a lot of issues.

So one of my best things to always recommend people do is when you are going into these communities, always, I don't want to say pretend but act like you are so grateful for all the contributions that everyone in the community has given in the past. So whenever I go into these communities, I start a post by saying, Hey folks, I've been a long-time lurker of this subreddit, and I have gotten so much value out of this community, I want to give value back. And I say that because I don't want to get a bunch of downvotes, people saying, oh, look at you, you're trying to spam us and all that good stuff. I'll come in with that type of a message, then I'll deliver as much value as possible, and then I'll get upvotes all the way to the moon and make it to the front page, and then you win from Reddit.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's a lot of politics for a social media platform.

Ross Simmonds:

It is, but that's social media these days.

Crystal Carter:

I mean, it's a community, isn't it? It's kind of like, you wouldn't show up at somebody's house and just start throwing stuff everywhere and just like, well, I've got a space for me, I've got a seat for me. I've got some food on my plate. You guys don't get food on your plate. You wouldn't, like somebody invites you around for dinner and you don't say thank you, you wouldn't do that.

Mordy Oberstein:

My kids do it all the time.

Ross Simmonds:

And I think one other piece that I would advise people to do is, before you go into any subreddit, a great hack is to sort the content by top post. So in a subreddit, you can go into a subreddit like r/Entrepreneur or let's say barbecue, and you can click on a button that says sort by. And instead of setting your default to sort by new post, you're going to set your settings to sort by top post. And then there's a section where you have the opportunity to select the amount of time that you want this sort to be applied to, and you're going to select all time.

Now, what you're going to do is analyze the types of posts that have generated the most engagement, most comments, most shares, most combos in your subreddit. So if you see that in the barbecue subreddit, the most popular piece is always when people are comparing two different types of smokers, then you can say to yourself, okay, when did that go viral? It went viral three years ago. I'm going to come back to this subreddit with a very similar style post about the best smokers that you should have in 2024, and I'm going to add additional value to my post, and I'm going to share that because I know that this post has content market fit with this subreddit.

You rinse and repeat that across every subreddit that is relevant to your niche and your audience, and you will win. We've done this with clients, and the clients have actually had their websites crash because of the amount of traffic that they can get from one subreddit. That's another-

Crystal Carter:

Was any of your client's game?

Ross Simmonds:

Right. That's another piece of it. It's like you have to recognize, they call Reddit the front page of the internet. So be ready if you do make the front page to have a ridiculous amount of traffic to your site.

Crystal Carter:

Okay, so the front page of the internet, it now is kind of going to be kind of the front page of the internet. What's your opinion on the Google Reddit acquisition partnership... not a straight acquisition-

Mordy Oberstein:

Fire hose of Reddit.

Ross Simmonds:

Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

What's your opinion?

Ross Simmonds:

It's interesting. I think it's interesting. And I know what Google's trying to do, and I can appreciate what they're attempting to do, and I wished that there were more Reddits out there so we could have a more diversified SERP of different forms and communities. But unfortunately, Reddit is one of the last standing forums in a traditional sense that is fully scrapable and digestible, et cetera.

So to me, I get what Google is trying to do because oftentimes if I'm asking a question, like what are the must-read books on a certain topic, I will sometimes include in my query Reddit because I want to hear from Redditors or real people what they think. And the reason why we do that is because we don't want to read content that was written by SEOs. We don't want to read a piece that an SEO wrote with the full intention of just ranking. We want to hear from other people who are like us.

Now, that's where it gets difficult because everybody on Reddit isn't like us. So while the SERP is so influential, I think the other part of this becomes like, is there a world where content from Facebook groups eventually starts to show up in the SERP or from Pinterest starts to show up in the SERP or where else can it come from? It's going to be a fascinating time. I get what they're trying to do, but I don't know if it's going to fully achieve what they are sending out for it to accomplish.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, I feel like they don't have the actual forms that they want. They want the Aleyda Solis' of the world to create a forum at SEO and have all that content there so they can rank that. But there's very few, in case you ever realize, Aleyda Solis' on this planet, so there just isn't enough content, and I feel like they're stuck, so now we're stuck.

Ross Simmonds:

Right.

Crystal Carter:

So I've had a situation where I've tried to solve a problem. For instance, there's a lot of IT help desks that have essentially gone to forums, right? They're just like, y'all figure it out. I had problems with my broadband. Mordy knows all about this because it was a whole big drama. I had problems with my broadband, and I was trying to figure out my broadband, and they're like, just go to our help forum. It was literally the blind leading the blind. People were like, oh, I stood on one foot and it worked. Oh, I changed my TV channel and it worked, all this sort of thing.

So I think the upvotes are great, but in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. If it's a question of lots of people who don't know what they're talking about and one person says, oh, you can remove your manual actions by just getting rid of Google search console, and everybody goes, that's great. That's one of the things I worry about. I worry about these things.

Mordy Oberstein:

You worry. It keeps you up at night worrying about the internet.

Crystal Carter:

I like smart people. And I'm not saying that there aren't smart people on Reddit, but people don't always qualify what they're saying.

Mordy Oberstein:

By the way, you just lost all your karma.

Ross Simmonds:

It just evaporated. It's gone. Yeah, it's so true. No, I completely hear you. I agree. I think there is elements of that that is at risk, and I think that's also true though on the internet at scale. I think when you think of the amount of blogs that are being published, yes, Google is trying their hardest to create and rank content that is created by authoritative sources, but we all have recently seen people doing Parasite SEO and showing up on Harvard's domain somehow with content. And when you see that type of thing, it's like, okay, who do we trust? We need to fix some of the fundamental plumbing around the internet first.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's the real problem. The whole thing is fundamentally flawed. And on that happy note, we're out of time. Ross, where can people find you?

Ross Simmonds:

Yeah, you can find me at rosssimmonds.com. I'm also on all of your favorite social media channels. You can do a quick search for Ross Simmonds. I'm typically @TheCoolestCool. That was my Twitter handle, also my handle on Instagram, and things like that. But both of you, thank you so much for having me on to chat about Reddit. It's one of my favorite platforms, and I hope folks can learn from it, absorb it, and hopefully not get banned.

Mordy Oberstein:

Make sure to give Ross a big old following, throw some karma his way in upvotes, and all that good stuff on the Reddit.

Ross Simmonds:

I'll take it.

Mordy Oberstein:

Nice. Thanks, Ross. Once again, thank you, Ross. Now, it's quite possible, and I don't know, I can't see the future, I don't have a crystal ball because I'm not Crystal and Mordy's Ball is more like a bowling ball than a crystal ball-

Crystal Carter:

It's a baseball, let's be honest.

Mordy Oberstein:

It's a baseball. Thank you. I'm literally wearing a baseball jersey and a baseball hat because it's opening day when we're recording this. It's like a holiday for me today.

Crystal Carter:

Okay. Yeah/

Mordy Oberstein:

But it's quite possible that we could be covering something to do with Reddit on the SERP in the news today. Who knows? You'll have to wait and see as we see what the Mysterious Barry has in store for us today on our Snappy SEO News. So here's the Snappy SEO News.

Snappy News, Snappy News, Snappy News. Well, turns out that the March 2024 core update finished on April 19th. That's like two weeks ago from when you'll hear this recording. Per Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable, Google March 2024 core update finish, April 19th, a week ago from when Barry wrote this article on April 26th, so almost two weeks ago, the time of this recording. Google has said that they upped the number. They went from saying that the update removed 40% of unhelpful results from the SERP to saying 45 removed, helped reduce rather low quality and unoriginal content in search results by 45% to quote Barry. So they upped it from 40 to 45%.

I'm not sure what that means yet. A lot of the big data is still coming out. I'm waiting for a SEMrush poll to come through and see what actually happened, how this update compares to other updates because it's just so different in terms of the rollout and in terms of what Google is saying. I know Glenn Gabe is preparing to write up an article as well. It'll be interesting to see how this all settles and how it all kind of plays out what the analysis sort of is. Very, very curious to see.

But in terms of you analyzing your own rankings, the cutoff date is April 19th. That's not to say there can't be tremors and reversals that follow it. I typically find that about a week or so after an update, you could still see reversals coming through a bit. So take the date of April 19th with a little bit of a grain of salt, but that is the official date. It's March 5th through April 19th. Okay, shoot.

This from Danny Goodwin, actually two from Danny Goodwin over at Search Engine Land. They kind of go together in my opinion. One is Google's CEO says, "AI overviews are increasing search usage." This is from Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO... I believe this is from Sundar's statements during or after, rather, their earnings call, basically saying that they're seeing an increase in AI overviews and Google's going to be evolving this experience as Danny says in the article, and yada, yada, yada, and they're going to make sure that there's traffic to actual websites and that this is going to expand and we're exploring more and we're doing more. And they particularly mentioned that there's pathways for monetization for them because again, this is an earnings call, so they want their investors to understand that with the AI advancements coming to the SERP, there is a plan for monetization.

The next article is Head of Google Search demands urgency as growth slows. Google's Senior VP blames increasing competition costs and regulation on a new operating reality. This kind of works hand in hand with the other article. You kind of see how Google's saying publicly. I think this came out from an all-hands that kind of leaked out. So in this case, you have Google's Senior VP, Prabhakar Raghavan saying things like, I think we can agree that things are not like they were 15, 20 years ago, things have changed. He's calling for more agileness in how they develop. He's saying there's more competition, which Danny points out is probably talking about OpenAI and Meta and Microsoft, probably Amazon also, and yada, yada yada.

They also increased costs. All the AI stuff that Google's doing is very costly. They're spending a lot to generate the SGE. He talks about that and talks about how they need to be different and it's not going to be easy going forward and yada, yada, yada. If you kind of put all the things Google is saying, whether it's from their CEO's public statements around their earnings calls, around SGE, and so forth, and you see what they're saying behind the scenes, it just kind of feels that something is happening at Google.

I won't weigh in here what my personal thoughts are. I just want to point out these articles to you. We'll link to them in the show notes so you can read it, form your own opinion. We'll love to chat with you about this on social media because I do have a lot of thoughts about this and what's happening at Google because it is, I think one of the more interesting times, and you should definitely read the statements from both these senior level folks over at Google in the articles that Danny wrote for you. And that's going to do it for this week's Snappy News. Actually, I think by the way, that the news segment that we do is undervalued.

Crystal Carter:

No, it's not. Whenever I go out, people say, I really love the Snappy News.

Mordy Oberstein:

Because there's so much news out there around SEO. Barry produces 30 articles a day in an hour.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, I don't know how he does it. Barry, tell us how you do it. I don't know how you type that quickly or maybe voice type.

Mordy Oberstein:

I don't know, but there's a lot of news that we don't cover, that we filter out because some of the things that Barry has to cover are absurd. Like, you should still have an about page, even though it might not be a ranking factor. We don't cover that on this podcast because that's just bonkers. But God bless Barry for covering it so that people know the truth about SEO. And the truth is, by the way, that you should not only read the SEO news, but the truth is you should also be following some great SEOs out there on forums. I guess Reddit, I guess there's some good SEOs on Reddit, but also X or LinkedIn.

And that brings us to this week's follow of the week, which is Ori Zilbershtein, who is at O-R-I-Z-I-L-B-E-R-S-H-T-E-I-N. That's a mouthful. So we'll link to his profile in the show notes. Ori's talked a lot about what goes on Reddit. I like Ori as a follow, as a person, as a friend. I've actually interviewed him a few times in my other podcasts. He's brilliant. He takes a very conceptual approach to things. He's got a very cut through the nonsense kind of approach to SEO marketing overall, and he's gone through a ton about the value of Reddit on the SERP and the not value of Reddit on the SERP and where things should be going and how Google should deal with this kind of stuff. So definitely give Ori a big follow and tell him what we sent you.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, he's a great follow. Super active on Twitter, so yeah, check in. Tell 'em we sent you.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, tell 'em we sent you. Hey, Ori, we're telling people, tell 'em we sent you. We should be a weird post, like, Hey Ori, I heard you on the SERP's Up podcast, they told me to tell you that they sent me.

Crystal Carter:

I'm here because of Crystal and Mordy.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm here. I'm not sure what to do now, but they told me to tell you.

Crystal Carter:

Sometimes I think about what following in real life would be like. People are like, oh yeah, you should follow that person. There's just people literally just following you around.

Mordy Oberstein:

And they're like saying, I like that. You pull a thing off the shelf of the grocery store, like, oh, I like that, good purchase.

Crystal Carter:

Right? I do like pop-tarts, and you're like, what?

Mordy Oberstein:

I'll retweet. I'll grab a box myself.

Crystal Carter:

Right? Or they go, he just bought pop-tarts. He just bought pop-tarts, everyone. You should also get some.

Mordy Oberstein:

Dr. Pete from Moz has a thing. If you went into a store and actually asked for things, what you ask on Google, like buy laptop now. You walk in the Best Buy and you just screamed, buy laptop now.

Crystal Carter:

I literally just enter lowest common denominator terms in sequence. I'm just like laptop, hi-res screen with-

Mordy Oberstein:

Cheap.

Crystal Carter:

Not even with, just like, yeah, cheap 35, megabyte. I don't know, that's not that many megabytes, but you know what I mean. I just, literally like, 10 terabytes.

Mordy Oberstein:

That'd be great. Walk in like, cheap laptop.

Crystal Carter:

Now. Near me.

Mordy Oberstein:

Now. Near me. On that happy note, thank you for joining us on the SERPs Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week with new episodes. We dive into how to reignite and revitalize your SEO. Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix SEO learning hub at wix.com/seo/learn. Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars and downloadable resources on the Wix SEO Learning Hub at you guessed it, wix.com/seo/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO.