Sure, web developers are hip to the SEO game when it comes to optimizing for Google. But have you considered optimizing your SEO for reddit? Well maybe you should! When redditors look for new reddits to subscribe to, they will pull up the subreddit search bar and plug in some keywords. Here’s what it looks like:

It’s very important to pay attention to the results of these searches. This is a great way to catch the attention bored redditors. But how? Here’s my advice: make sure your subreddit has a fantastic description that covers all of the relevant bases for your content. For example my browser game, Nevergrind, is related to quite a lot of topics: indie games, web development, greensock, easeljs, free games, everquest, diablo 2, phantasy star, and RPGs. It’s very important to mention any relevant topic!

For example here is the description I am using for Nevergrind:

Alright! Cool. It’s a good idea to include links, too. As you can see I link to my website and some of the libraries that I use. You could probably try to optimize this further by linking to sites that are likely to refer traffic back to your site as well.

Initially I had a very simple description such as “Nevergrind is an indie browser game”. It had no links or anything. No good! When people are searching for fun new sub-reddits they need a good description to get a snapshot assessment of your site/game or whatever you’re hocking. Plus when all of those juicy, relevant keywords are in there, reddit is more likely to list you in the sub-reddit search results.

Here are a few examples of how my sub-reddit ranks in search results for different terms just moments after editing my description. This search was performed without being logged in to an account:

#1: html5 game

#7: html5

#5: browser game

#3: everquest

#8: indie game

#1: indie rpg

#1: Diablo 2 (I don’t know how)

#2: Phantasy Star

#11: World of Warcraft (!)

#25: RPG (last result on the first page)

#5: javascript

#17: animation

#2: canvas

To some extent I am left to wonder how I am ranking so high in all of these searches. All I did was sprinkle in as many relevant terms as I could think of. Maybe there’s more to this special sauce than I even realize? In any case, I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. These search results look great to me. Give it a shot and let me know how it works for you! In the months ahead I will monitor the progress of the /r/nevergrind subreddit and see how the new description drives traffic to reddit and to Nevergrind itself.