To me, Reddit is one of the best free audience research tools out there.
I mean, where else can you find a large gathering of your target audience all in one place?
Posting daily about their pain points, interests, and/or frustrations.
Reddit has so much untapped potential when it comes to learning about your audience.
To be honest, it’s one of my favorite ways to find content topics.
In this article, I’ll show you a few ways you can use Reddit for keyword/audience research and find topics that keyword research tools won’t show you.
Just be prepared to sift through a lot of 💩.
7 Ways You Can Use Reddit for Keyword Research
Alright, let’s do this.
I guarantee if I had a “what is keyword research section?” or “what is Reddit?” section, you’d all collectively sigh and leave this article.
So, let’s jump straight into it.
If you want to find solid topic ideas on Reddit, you can:
- Use Site Operators to Find a Specific Range of Posts
- Use Python to Scrape Top-Rated Posts
- Sort by Top Manually to Find the Most Popular Posts
- Use Subreddit Stats
- Use Reddit’s search feature
- Look for Common Problems People Are Having
- Add Reddit to the End of Your Search
1. Use Site Operators to Find a Specific Range of Reddit Posts
The first (and easiest) research method you can use for Reddit is a site operator.
The easiest way to do this would be to use the “site:” operator along with the “intext:” or “intitle:” operator.
You can also just add your text in quotations next to your “site:” operator.
This will allow you to find pages on Reddit that contain specific text or phrases within the content.
If you do it this way, I highly recommend you use a specific subreddit to filter your results.
Example: I’ll use r/HR to find different topics on employee productivity.
Here’s the results I get from this:
- Best productivity app?
- How do you measure performance?
- How do you monitor WFH employees?
- Easiest tasks to automate / how to make my job easier?
- HR in startups
After this, you’ll have access to plenty of relevant topics that you can go after.
You can use this article here to find all the search operators you can use.
Pro tip: Start off broad with your searches. If you start off too specific, your results are going to be limited. Start broad to find more related posts.
Pro Pro Tip: If you’re struggling to find a subreddit community, type in a relevant keyword on Reddit’s search tool and then filter by communities.
Pro Pro Pro Tip: If you find your ideal community, sometimes they’ll even have a related communities section at the bottom
2. Use Python and Reddit’s API to Scrape Top-Rated Posts Across Different Subreddits
Now, I’m going to be honest here, I have almost zero coding experience.
I know next to nothing about coding, so I won’t try and act like a smartass here.
ChatGPT is usually my best friend for this.
If you use it right, it can basically walk you through building Python code step by step.
You can use Python as a tool to connect to the Reddit API and make specific requests, like scraping large sets of content topics.
Example: I was able to connect to the API and find the top-rated questions on r/SEO from last year.
You can access my Python code here.
3. Sort by Top to Find the Most Popular Community Posts
If you’re not a developer and would rather do this the easy way, you can go straight to your subreddit of choice and search by “top.”
Just be aware that the results will largely depend on the subreddit you’re using.
If you’re on a subreddit like r/politics, you’re not going to see any questions or answers posts.
Instead, it’s going to be mostly news pieces.
But if you go to r/saas, it will mostly be community questions.
I recommend sorting by “top” of last week or month to find posts that aren’t just for engagement.
Top-upvoted posts of all time will typically be memes and posts that aren’t relevant for audience research purposes.
Remember this will depend heavily on the subreddit you choose.
But you should be able to find some gems this way.
Pro tip: If you’re struggling to find any relevant topics, you can use the communities search bar and add a “?” modifier. This will be a more detailed section later on in the article.
4. Plug In Reddit Using a Keyword Research Tool
I think the most user-friendly way to find topic ideas through Reddit would be using either Ahrefs or SEMrush.
Ahrefs is my tool of choice, so I’ll be using it for this example.
Basically, we’ll want to load up site explorer and plug in our subreddit.
You could use the whole Reddit domain, but again, it’ll be much easier to sort through data by using one singular subreddit.
Once you have your subreddit plugged in, head over to keywords and check out your options.
I’ll probably add a few modifiers to my search to make finding actual topics easier.
In this case, I’ll add:
- A minimum word count of 3
- Keywords that contain: best, how, what, why, where, when, alternative, guide, vs, software, tools
- A position filter to see which posts are ranking on the first page
This will give me topics like:
- how to collect customer feedback
- how to validate a product idea
- how to create a demo video for software
- how to advertise for saas
- how to calculate customer acquisition cost saas
On the flip side, if you do decide to use the Reddit domain as your search URL, you can use a URL filter to find posts under specific subreddits.
So, assuming the process is the same as before, I can add a URL path filter for:
- https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/
Pro tip: A few years ago, if there was a Reddit post showing on the first page, it was almost always a sign that there weren’t any dedicated articles around that topic. After the helpful content update, Reddit can be found on almost every SERP. It still could be a low hanging fruit opportunity; you’ll just have to check what the competition looks like.
5. Use Subreddit Stats to Find Top Posts and Data
Another great tool associated with Reddit is subredditstats.com.
It’s basically a massive database of everything on Reddit.
It’s really a fun tool to use.
However, with Reddit adding pricing to their API, this tool doesn’t update as much as it used to.
Finding Entities to Include in your Content
Using the subreddit stats tool, you can find the most common entities that appear in that subreddit.
Using r/SEO as an example, we have all of these different keywords that are tracked and monitored.
Here we can see “long-form,” “clients,” and “data-driven” are the top keywords being used.
You can use this report though to help with NLP with your content.
Instead of stuffing your content with the same keyword over and over, you can use these terms to integrate into your content to increase the relevance of it.
You want to improve the salience of your keyword using NLP and help Google better understand what you’re writing about.
Top Submissions
If you don’t want to go venturing on Reddit to find keyword opportunities, you can also use their top submissions section to see top submissions for the last hour, day, week, month, year, or of all time.
6. Use Community Forums on Specific Subreddits to Find Common Pain Points Coming From Your Audience
Another tip for using Reddit as a keyword research tool, while not entirely necessary, can be useful to find out more pain points.
Using r/SaaS again, there’s a daily Q&A board up for people looking to discuss their new product ideas.
Not saying you should use this as an opportunity to pitch your service, but you can use this as a way to better understand your audience.
What their pain points are, what are the questions they’re asking that haven’t been answered yet?
Keyword research tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush will not tell you this stuff.
Basically, you want to look for issues they’re having and how you can fix it.
Instead of just saying your product does x,y, and z, you want to make sure that you’re creating content that makes your audience feel understood.
It doesn’t have to be over-the-top sentimental, but once you know what they’re looking for, you can better craft your messaging to meet them.
You can even use your content briefs to inform your writers who they should be writing to.
7. Use Reddit’s Search Feature
In a similar vein to using a site operator, you can also use Reddit’s search feature to find specific posts across the platform or on specific subreddits.
It’s super easy; just plug in your community at the top and then add a modifier like:
- How
- Why
- Best
- What
With this, you have more flexibility in terms of what you’re looking for.
You can sort by:
- New
- Top
- Hot
- Or even controversial if you’re feeling spicy
Why Reddit Out of All Places?
Okay, so if you’ve been on Reddit for some time now, you know how toxic it can be.
There are some pretty terrible subreddits out there.
But why is Reddit even worth using in the first place?
Well for starters, depending on your industry, your ICP’s profession likely has a subreddit dedicated to them.
So if your tool is Supply chain design software for supply chain design software for manufacturing, you can use both r/logistics, r/supplychain, or r/manufacturing.
It is quite literally a congregation of the people you want to market to.
That’s not to say that you should market to them directly on Reddit (please don’t do this or say I told you to do this), but it’s a great way to learn more about your audience and what they care about.
So, instead of relying on keyword research tools to figure out the intent behind a user’s search, you can basically look at what that intent actually is.
How to Find the Right Subreddit for Audience Research
Honestly, the points I mentioned above are actually fairly easy.
The hardest part is probably finding the right subreddit to use for audience research.
If your ICP is in a broader niche, then this shouldn’t be a problem, but the more specific you go, the less opportunities you’ll have.
With that being said, you can still find different subreddits in three ways. You can:
- Search for subreddits manually
- Use the related subreddit button
- Or use a similar subreddit tool
Using Subreddit Finder to Find Connected Communities
Another tool you can use to find similar subreddits is this subreddit finder tool.
This will find all relevant subreddits to your entered one and connect the dots between them based on common subscribers and topics discussed.
From there, you can find subreddits that can work for keyword research.
Additional Pro Tips to Keep in Mind When Using Reddit for Keyword/Topic Research
So, hopefully this has been a little bit helpful to you.
While the above tips should cover 75% of it, I just wanted to include a few additional pro tips you should keep in mind when using Reddit.
TL;DR:
- Look for Commonly Asked Questions from your Audience
- Find Topics From Subreddits That Have Conversion Intent. Avoid Focusing Too Much on Traffic Volumes
- Look into the actual intent of what someone’s asking. Don’t just assume you know; look into what they’re trying to solve
Look for Commonly Asked Questions from your Audience
The most important thing you need to do here is look for trends/patterns in the questions coming from your audience.
Is there a common problem your audience is dealing with?
Have they been able to solve it?
Does your product help solve this problem?
What are common answers to that question?
These are all ways you can either:
- Find new topic ideas
- Learn more about your audience
Then, once you have those topic ideas, you can perform a search around that query to see if anyone on the SERPs has covered it yet.
Not only will it have less competition, but you’ll stand out as the main answer to that pain point.
Find Topics From Subreddits That Have Conversion Intent. Avoid Focusing Too Much on Traffic Volumes
Always prioritize conversion intent over monthly search volume.
You want your content to act as a touchpoint for your ICP’s buyer’s journey.
You need to ask yourself:
- Are they already aware of the existing problem?
- Do they know solutions exist for that problem?
- Are they in the market for a product that can act as a solution to that problem?
- Is this topic relevant to my product?
- What would the desired outcome be if I targeted this topic with content?
“Is this topic relevant to my product?” should probably be one of the first questions you ask before you target a topic.
With that being said, high-volume keywords do not equal high conversions.
If anything, it’s the opposite.
Source: Broadplace
High conversions typically come from longer-tailed keywords, whereas shorter keywords (with higher volume) have lower conversion rates.
This will depend on the niche you’re in, but out of these 2 topics, which one do you think has more purchasing intent:
- What Does a Project Manager Do?
- Best Project Management Software for Software Engineers
It’ll all depends on your ICP and industry, but in most cases, these keywords will usually signify conversion intent:
- Use case keywords – people are searching specifically for your type of product (ex: weekly reporting software)
- Category keywords – Again, people looking for a specific use case product, but now looking to see who their options are within that category
- Competitor keywords – yes, yes, yes, you don’t want to cover your competitors. However, I have data across numerous accounts that show that pages around your competitors convert the best. Over the last 90 days, 4 pages that mention competitors are in the top 10 in terms of driving conversions. Also don’t laugh at my highlighting skills
Closing Thoughts
While Google Search Console is usually my preferred tool for finding content topics, I find Reddit is a great starting point, especially for newer clients in hyper-specific niches and newer websites.
I won’t have as much data to work off of, so Reddit is a great starting point for learning more about that audience and finding new topic ideas we can target.
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I’m a B2B SaaS SEO consultant with 4+ years of experience helping companies in niches like:
- Life sciences
- HR tech
- Fintech
- Analytics
- Martech
- Data privacy