A search marketer named Lars Lofgren felt exasperated by the avalanche of spam hitting Reddit and decided to expose the tricks that spammers are using to exploit Google’s preference for ranking Reddit discussions.
Reddit’s Spam Problem
Lars wrote that the reason he decided to expose how spammers are exploiting Reddit was because he’s a Redditor who is appalled by how spammy Reddit has become which in turn is infecting how spammy Google’s search results have become.
I spoke with Lars by email and he explained his motivation:
“I’m in the SEO industry and I believe in producing great content. That’s always been what motivates me. Produce great content, make Google users happy, Google features my stuff, and everyone wins.
Starting last fall, Google has begun featuring Reddit everywhere. In theory, this can be good. Reddit has tons of authentic conversations. But it’s anonymous, not moderated well, and has no accountability. So great content across the internet is getting buried below spammy Reddit content.
I want to be able to search Google and reliably find great content again, not spam. And a lot of business owners that run great websites have had to do layoffs or even shut down their websites because of this.”
How Spammers Exploit Reddit
Lars wrote an article that exposes six ways that spammers are using Reddit to promote affiliate sites and getting rewarded by Google. In our discussion I asked him if links were commoditized on Reddit and he speculated that it wouldn’t surprise him.
“I wouldn’t be surprised at all if moderators are selling links. …I’d be shocked if it wasn’t happening somewhere on Reddit. Or a company could just buy the link outright, lots of companies do this with blog posts that rank.”
1. Become A Moderator
Moderators have the power to pin a comment to any post. If anyone objects to the spammy activity the moderators can simply ban the users and make them go away.
In our conversation, Lars explained how moderators spam their subreddits and why Google’s uncontrolled ranking of Reddit discussions has corrupted them:
“A moderator of a subreddit can publish a comment of their own to any post in their subreddit. Usually it’ll be a new comment that they make to the conversation. And then pin the comment to the very top of the conversation so everyone sees it.
They can’t modify comments from other users but they can pin any comment of their own. This moderation power is there for communicating to their community, like when a conversation gets too controversial and a moderator wants to slow it down.
Some moderators have realized that their subreddit is being featured for lucrative terms in Google. So they go looking for posts that rank, then pin comments in those posts with a link that makes them a lot of money personally.”
2. Find Posts That Google Ranks
Lars wrote that another tactic spammers use is to identify posts that Google is ranking and then add a new pinned post that contains an affiliate link. A pinned post is a post that’s permanently lodged at the beginning of a discussion. That ensures that it will have maximum exposure and engagement with users who visit Reddit from Google’s search results.
He writes:
“If you were a mod of that subreddit, you could go into that comment thread, add a new comment with your own affiliate link, then pin that comment to the top of the thread. And that’s EXACTLY what someone has done…”
3. Spam A Trusted Subreddit
The next technique doesn’t even involve becoming a mod. Lars described that a spammer just needs to find a subreddit that has a history of ranking in the SERPs. The next step is to create a topic. Lars suggests using a sock puppet to answer the question with a link.
As a moderator at WebmasterWorld for around 20 years, and a forum owner as well, I can confirm that that technique is an old one known as Tag Teaming. Tag Teaming is where a person posts a question then subsequently answers the question with a different account. That second account is called a sock puppet.
Successfully using sock puppets against a seasoned and determined moderator won’t work. But from my experience as a forum owner and a moderator, I know that most moderators are just enthusiasts and rarely have any idea when someone is abusing their forum. So Lar’s insistence that spammers are using sock puppets is absolutely valid.
4. Create Engagement Bait
Another tactic that Lars exposes is about dropping a mention of a product or website in a Reddit discussion instead of a link. Spammers do this because it has a higher likelihood of surviving moderator scrutiny.
What spammers do is post a discussion that purposely inspires empathy and causes other Redditors to jump in with their advice and experiences. The key to this strategy is to use a sock puppet to post an answer early in the discussion so that when after it begins trending the post with the spam in it will rank higher.
Lars writes:
“Use all your Reddit accounts to pump up the conversation and get it trending. Once that’s done, the community should run with it.
If you hit an emotional pain really well and your product mention looks natural, the subreddit will go crazy. Everyone will jump in, empathize, offer their own suggestions, argue, upvote, the whole thing.”
There’s a similar strategy called Linkbaiting that uses emotional triggers to promote engagement. One of the legendary SEOs from the past, Todd Malicoat, wrote about these triggers 17 years ago (some of which he credited to other people for having invented them). Using emotionally triggering topics is an old but proven tactic.
5. Build A New Subreddit
Lars said that another spam tactic is to build their own subreddit, seed it with sock puppet conversations on topics that are a highly ranked in similar subreddits. Lars explained that Reddit’s recommendation engine will begin surfacing the spam posts to users interested in that topic which will then help the spammy subreddit grow so that the spammer can do whatever they want with it once it’s mature.
6. Aged Reddit Accounts Can Be Bought
Lars revealed that there is a market for aged Reddit member accounts with posting histories that can be purchased for as little as $150. This avoids having to create an army of sock puppets and building a posting history so that they appear to be legit accounts.
Everything Google Ranks Is A Commodity
I’ve been in SEO for twenty five years and one thing that never changes is that everything that Google ranks becomes a commodity. If it ranks then there are a legion of spammers and hackers who desire to exploit it. So it’s not surprising to me that spammers have worked out how to successfully exploit Reddit.
The spam situation is bad news for Google because now it has to police Reddit discussions to weed out the spam. Is Google up to the task?
Read the article by Lars Lofgren:
The Sleazy World of Reddit Marketing, Everything is Fake
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Luis Molinero