[Method+Theory+Poll] Retroactively Editing into Highly Upvoted Reddit Posts/Comments

Retroactively editing links into highly upvoted Reddit comments. Yee?

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MatthewGraham

MatthewGraham

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Edit: Title missing a word. Should be:
[Method+Theory+Poll] Retroactively Editing Backlinks into Highly Upvoted Reddit Posts/Comments
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Two quick observations/facts about Reddit upvotes:
  • https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/psa-reddit-posts-and-comments-with-a-3-upvote-score-are-d0follow.983640/.
  • The more upvotes (and comments) a post has, the stronger those links are. This is true because upvotes (and comments) change/adjust/restructure Reddit's internal link structure. A post that has a lot of upvotes and comments is linked to from increasingly more places. Here are a few of many examples:
    • The top posts all get internal links to them from the subreddit's "top" section/page (one of the most highly trafficked/linked to pages on any give subreddit).
    • When users comment in a thread, it creates an internal link back to that thread from the profile page of every single user who commented.
    • Hot/popular posts are more likely to show up on Reddit's internal search pages, which are pages in and of themselves.
The point being, outbound links in highly upvoted comments have a lot of power behind them, which is driven by Reddit's internal link structure. And they certainly have more power behind them than do junk links on somewhere like /r/GarbageSEOLinkFarm.

Follow-up observation: It's easy to get 10k, 20k+, etc. upvotes to bullshit meme posts; it's harder to plan out a clever/subtle promotional post in a way that will get the same obscene number of upvotes.

Follow-up-follow up observation: You can edit comments and text posts for six months after they're made. While posts get almost all of their views/traffic in the first 24 hours of their lifespan, this is potentially advantageous from a link-building/SEO perspective in that past that 24 hour burst of traffic, you can edit links into these posts with minimal to no scrutiny from subreddit moderators and other users.

These older posts retain their favorable/strong internal links, which means the SEO impact is strong for links retroactively edited in even after that initial burst of traffic.

Examples
These posts, for example, could easily have backlinks edited into them:
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/7a0bnd/i_walked_in_the_bedroom_to_find_my_wife_dead_in/
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/6cmj7m/why_does_my_shower_curtain_seem_to_gravitate/
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/7a2de6/about_the_new_sounds/
And alternatively/additionally these highly upvoted comments could have links edited into them:
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/7a1jq0/if_you_woke_up_tomorrow_morning_a_billionaire/dp6kgk7/
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/79wdhb/til_93_of_all_humans_who_have_ever_existed_are/dp58koq/
Just to be clear, none of these examples are my posts. These aren't my accounts.

The Actual Point
Has anyone else experimented with this method or similar methods? I am running a few tests currently; it will take some time to actually get useful data. In the meantime, anyone else have experience with methods like this?

Bonus minor question - Is there demand/interest for a BST of this type? The Reddit BST threads I've seen have been either a) focused on the SMM side / selling upvotes rather than the link-building/SEO side and/or b) are mediocre/weak link farms on places like /r/SEOSpamLinkFarm.
 
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I can see it being a good idea to comment in niche relevant subreddits that are active and editing the link after the thread has died down. Just dropped my link on a 2 month old post and I'm going to see whether Ahrefs views it as do follow or not. It has a score of 6.
 
everythingred said:
I can see it being a good idea to comment in niche relevant subreddits that are active and editing the link after the thread has died down. Just dropped my link on a 2 month old post and I'm going to see whether Ahrefs views it as do follow or not. It has a score of 6.
Click to expand...

Great. Interested to hear about any useful results/data.

Also, when you right click -> inspect a page, you can definitely see Reddit removing nofollow tags once it hits the score of 3 or more (and also see them adding them back in if the post somehow falls back down). They're definitely d0follow.
 
Minor update - added link to a comment with 2kish upvotes (comment, not a top-level post). Link goes to an article on a web 2.0, which links back to an article on a money site. Targeting a low-to-medium competition keyword.

Added the link last night and when I checked this morning the money site had moved from #2 to #1. The web 2.0 was showing up at 9th last night; jumped up to 7th this morning.

Seems promising so far... Need more data to say anything statistically significant. Planning to continue to experiment with this.
 
MatthewGraham said:
Minor update - added link to a comment with 2kish upvotes (comment, not a top-level post). Link goes to an article on a web 2.0, which links back to an article on a money site. Targeting a low-to-medium competition keyword.

Added the link last night and when I checked this morning the money site had moved from #2 to #1. The web 2.0 was showing up at 9th last night; jumped up to 7th this morning.

Seems promising so far... Need more data to say anything statistically significant. Planning to continue to experiment with this.
Click to expand...
Would love it if you/someone else could test it with a few different posts/links and post the results here. This might be the new best thing! :D

Thanks for the post!
 
MatthewGraham said:
Great. Interested to hear about any useful results/data.

Also, when you right click -> inspect a page, you can definitely see Reddit removing nofollow tags once it hits the score of 3 or more (and also see them adding them back in if the post somehow falls back down). They're definitely d0follow.
Click to expand...

It says no follow and has a score of 4.
 
everythingred said:
It says no follow and has a score of 4.
Click to expand...

4 upvotes? Reddit also has vote fuzzing/bluring. Posts scores are generally shown to users as being +/- 20-50% of their actual score. You occassionally see posts that say they're above that threshold, but still are nofollow because the actual score is below the required score.

Yogesh1998 said:
Would love it if you/someone else could test it with a few different posts/links and post the results here. This might be the new best thing! :D

Thanks for the post!
Click to expand...

Planning on running a larger case study shortly. Maybe 20 or so links.
 
Brief update on this. I did in fact start running a case study. The issue that I ran into is that a large number of the posts that were good targets for this (high karma, can be edited) were on /r/AskReddit, which seems to have a strong automoderator in terms of editing links into posts (posts getting automatically removed upon being edited), which has been limiting the amount of data that can be collected.

Currently having a VA make text-based reposts on various other subreddits to build up more candidates based on what takes off. Testing on a smaller scale where possible in the meantime.

everythingred said:
It says no follow and has a score of 4.
Click to expand...

Also, I checked the other day and I think it's actually 10 upvotes to flip the post to d0follow (rather than 3).
 
Last edited:
I always thought it was 100+ upvotes overall to turn a link from reddit into do0 low? Or maybe I've got my wires crossed. I am a N00bby.
 
this is a really great share! time to edit my reddit posts :P
 
N00bby said:
I always thought it was 100+ upvotes overall to turn a link from reddit into do0 low? Or maybe I've got my wires crossed. I am a N00bby.
Click to expand...

I know I originally said three and then ten, but I'm amending this again. It is a number that is more than three and less than ten. It seems to vary based on some factor that has been difficult to pin down. Not 100% sure. Anyway, the exact number doesn't matter that much -- 10 upvotes is easy to get.

MarcellHaines said:
still i cant understand this fully...:(
Click to expand...
A lot of it has to do with internal linking. You might check out this post:
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/noob-beginner-guide-how-to-improve-your-rankings-with-basic-internal-linking-practices.990211/

thescrrr said:
this is a really great share! time to edit my reddit posts :p
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, I did mess with this some (Re: case study mentioned earlier). It's worked decently. Seems to work better for top level posts than comments for... various reasons. Might write a follow up post at some point with more details. Comments and posts both have value.
 
MatthewGraham said:
Brief update on this. I did in fact start running a case study. The issue that I ran into is that a large number of the posts that were good targets for this (high karma, can be edited) were on /r/AskReddit, which seems to have a strong automoderator in terms of editing links into posts (posts getting automatically removed upon being edited), which has been limiting the amount of data that can be collected.

Currently having a VA make text-based reposts on various other subreddits to build up more candidates based on what takes off. Testing on a smaller scale where possible in the meantime.



Also, I checked the other day and I think it's actually 10 upvotes to flip the post to d0follow (rather than 3).
Click to expand...
so you say I should avoid editing askreddit's posts? all my high karma comments are there :D
 
thescrrr said:
so you say I should avoid editing askreddit's posts? all my high karma comments are there :D
Click to expand...

AskReddit works as long as your link isn't on their Automoderator list. They blacklisted two of the domains I was planning to test with in response to a different project from a few weeks ago, but if you haven't annoyed the AskReddit mods previously, you should be fine. On a realted note, the sitewide blacklist also automatically removes a lot of web 2.0s; WordPress blogs work fine; Weebly, Jimdo, and a lot of others get filtered out, though. Test the link(s) you want to post in a throwaway comment before you edit your important posts and you should be fine.

If you want to test it before you edit a post, you can make some random new comment (just text), open the permalink to the comment in a private/incognito window (or anywhere where you're not logged in), edit the link into the test post, then refresh the permalink from the logged out window. If it gets removed, then the link is blacklisted. Otherwise, go for it.
 
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