Fatrank Podcast

James Dooley: Reddit marketing. So many people in the SEO community are talking about different strategies using Reddit as part of their SEO. Today I'm joined with Daward Khn who is the founder of crowdrely.io and also the founder of crowdscale.ai. So Doward, pleasure to meet you.

Daward Khn: Nice to meet you, James. Nice to meet you.

James Dooley: Good stuff. So obviously um we followed each other's work for a while. Um, and so many people in the SEO community, especially it seems, after they got hit with a helpful content update, seem to move to using Reddit marketing and using your tool at crow reply.io. For anyone who's watching this, can you just explain a little bit of firstly, I'd say why Reddit marketing is important in today's kind of search engines?

Daward Khn: Absolutely. I mean so so so just to give a quick background we've been u I I own other several SAS businesses and our main acquisition channel was content marketing it was doing SEO and uh 3 years ago we saw this shift where where I'm sure we've heard of the core updates where we we saw our traffic just uh you know decreasing by 40% and we saw the shift where Reddit threads uh these forums were you know were now started to rank for for the core keywords that we were going after and that's where we just had this idea instead of you know just doing SEO we should also focus on this channel because this is where we believed it was just going to go more from here and there was there was a shift in in consumer search where where previously uh people were used to reading 5,000word article but right now it's it's just I just want my information they just go to Reddit. Let's say I want u I want to buy, you know, running shoes. For that, I just go on Reddit, see what the top comment is, and just get my answer. Then maybe go to a Forbes 4,000 words article that's filled with affiliate links and and get my answer. So that's where we just started working on Reddit. And uh based on that, we we kept using it for our projects and tools. and uh everything that we learned during that time we we basically thought um this is a real problem where many people just don't know how to do marketing on Reddit. um it's it's quite different to other platforms, right? So that's that's why we created a crowd reply to solve that problem.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I mean, for myself, I seen so many keywords start having appended at the end where real users were searching for, let's say, running shoes, Reddit, and they wanted to go through to Reddit. And I think a lot of users became frustrated with affiliate sites where one person's opinion just did a top 10 list of running shoes. Probably never even wore any of those running shoes and just put the ones that give them the most commission at the top and then the least commission at the bottom and did a top 10 review. And I think users started to get wind of what was going on and therefore was preferring a forum where people could go back and forth and comment and disagree with them. Um and people can upvote going yes I agree with this and stuff like that. So that was then I'm presuming the start of why you created crowdrely.io. Um when was that created and can you explain to a few people what even is crowdrely.io?

Daward Khn: Yeah. So we started almost 11 months ago with the crowd reply. So Crowd reply is is is an Reddit marketing platform where the biggest hurdle and problem that we saw with with brands that wanted to engage on Reddit is you cannot scale on Reddit with just one or two personal accounts. You need to have a good quality of of accounts to to scale on Reddit. And that's where we come in. So you can use our network of of these accounts that are basically just highquality active uh old accounts where we handle the fulfillment for you and in your case you just write the content and we publish that for you. So that's basically what we provide and uh we have we have our own platform where you can track everything. We have reporting uh what's working, what's not working. We have all these different guides, uh, tutorials, videos just to set you up, um, for success on on Reddit.

James Dooley: Yeah. So, anyone who's looking to do Reddit SEO, um, for me, I think it's a no-brainer. I think people should be now who's looking to do any sort of search engine optimization should be on the channel and on the present. They should be seen across multiple social media accounts. Um, obviously what it sounds like is almost like you've almost got like what used to be the old school blackout methodology of PBN's. You've got like a set of accounts that have got karma that can post on these platforms and then able to then get the up votes. For anyone that doesn't know much about Reddit marketing or Reddit SEO, can you explain to people who's watching this what karma means with regards to on Reddit profiles?

Daward Khn: Karma is basically just points. So the more karma you have, the more karma these these accounts have, the better and established your account is. And with karma, there's another thing which which um we focus on a lot. It's the age of that account. That's also super important. So you can have a super brand new account, but it has let's say a karma of 10,000 or 100,000. But even in that case the the quality of that account is not going to be much because the account age is is relatively new. So karma in in just very basic terms it's how many points you have acred over the period of time and that karma is is is generated by by posting helpful comments on on Reddit on different threads just you know putting out helpful content for for people to go through.

James Dooley: So I mean it sounds a little bit like Google saying you provide helpful content and then the links will naturally come and you're building up karma. So it's almost like for anyone who's in the SEO industry it's almost like the DR of a website. It's almost like the DR rate. It's the rating of a profile. So, how important let's say I was to find a thread and the it was a a a question that was heavily related to let's say I'm a roofer and I'm based let's say we do local SEO and I'm a roofer based in Manchester and someone was to turn around and say I'm looking for the best roofing repair company in Manchester. How important is the karma of the profile that leaves the comment versus how many up votes you get? Is it the karma that's more important or the up votes which is more important for how high your comment starts to be seen?

Daward Khn: Yeah, that's actually a great question. So, it's it's both. Um the the account karma and age that's required for the content to stick right let's say um if I can share my screen I can show you a live example and uh let me share my screen. Yeah. Can you see my screen?

James Dooley: Yeah, I can see your screen yet.

Daward Khn: Yeah. So, let's say I search for best uh roofers and I just let's do this. Let's see what we what comes up. So, so right here we see these rally threads ranking uh in the top spots. And if I open this up. So the thing is um to to stick your your content on on a Reddit thread, you need to have a good account. So let's say with this account, if I just open this up, you see it has 54,000 karma. It's 11 years old. So if you have an account like this, it's super super easy to then basically comment anything on on Reddit. Now this is the first part. The second part is the upwards, right? So let's say we post a comment, a new comment on this thread that is going to be down here, right? Now, just like uh just like Google search, uh when we search for something, we tend to go for the top three results. They have the highest CTR. That's the exact same thing with Reddit comments. Anyone that's landing on this Reddit thread from from, you know, people that are searching for it on Google and then they're landing on this page, they're going to go through the top three comments because they have the highest number of uploads. Maybe they have replied just to, you know, it adds more validation psychologically and uh then just you know go for for the you know maybe this company that that is being recommended then go all the way down to find their answer. So that is why adding up votes is is super important to your comments. So both are different. Um karma is just needed to to post your content. Um if it's let's say a super you know brand new account then posting a promotional comment would be would be relatively harder because um Reddit filters will just remove that uh comment. So it seems to be the karma helps the comment to stick and then the up votes is what kind of pushes you up the rankings on the comments.

James Dooley: So with regards to that, let's say um let's keep in line with this then with the roofers in Manchester. Let's say I was wanting to post on there to say I believe that Doul's roofing is the best company. Come and get in touch today and then link through to my website. Can I place a link in that comment or will that definitely get removed if I've got a low karma? And if I was to use something likely.io, would that stick if I've got a high karma?

Daward Khn: Yeah. So, there are a lot of things that go into that go into this. Um, so if I just open this up, uh, so the most what we recommend is is at least the thing with Reddit is if you're too promotional, then people will call you out and they can, you know, see like you're you're just being you're just promoting without adding any value. That's that's what we recommend. So any any thread you engage on, at least add some value, add some information and then mention your brand in a very subtle way. Uh that's just what we'd recommend. So if it's if it's coming coming across too strong where you're you're just, you know, hammering your your brand name, it doesn't work that way. Um it just needs to have, you know, like a very subtle um promotion. So, it it could be like, "Hey, I'm using uh XYZ roofers and uh they did a really good job, you know, and and here's why, you know, just just a a normal comment where it doesn't sound like you're you're shilling them, but it's just, you know, sharing your experience." So, that's that's generally what we've seen work the best. And uh there are two things you can do. So, there there is adding links in your in your uh comment and then there's just doing a brand mention. So what we'd recommend is is just doing brand mentions because the thing is these social platforms aren't built for you know um diverting external traffic from their platforms and and they just and that's one of the reason and obviously adding links just looks more um promotional. So what we just recommend is is a brand mention like this without adding any any links because right now adding links is is super hard um on on Reddit generally. So, just do the brand mentions.

James Dooley: Would you would you try to incentivize people in the comment to say um make certain to search for and then the brand name, but with obviously without it being a link, would you literally say that or would you maybe even put like a telephone number in or anything like that or would you stay away from anything promotional like that?

Daward Khn: No, that's a yeah, that's a good suggestion. So for local businesses, what we uh what we recommend doing is you can you can either add you can add your brand name, you can add your uh phone number, you can for for people, you know, that are doing affiliate marketing, you know, for for local businesses, they can add um these these numbers that can then be um forwarded to other other numbers. That's another way you can you can basically do this. So you can if you want to do rank and rent, it's it's a it's a great method for forwarding these numbers. So yeah, you can add your your name, you can add your number, you can add links, but links generally have a higher removal rate. That's that's a problem with it.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. So, anyone who's watching this, right, so we give the the roofers in Manchester example for local SEO in using Reddit to try and increase obviously like branded mentions and get exposure and it's good for um branding. But what happens if I was to type in um roofers in let's say Liverpool, right? And when I type in roofers in Liverpool in Google, let's just say as being the example, no forums like Reddit doesn't rank for roofers in Liverpool in Google SER. Is there a way of using something like crowd reply.io to ask the question like who have you found to be the best roofing company in Liverpool? So, it prompts and gets it and then you can leave one or two reviews and do one or two up votes and then it might pull them through that Reddit thread for that specific query. Or have you found that that doesn't it that doesn't work very well?

Daward Khn: No, it definitely works. um just because there's there's no Reddit thread on that uh specific SER or keyword uh I I would say it's it presents an opportunity um because there in in 95 or I would even say 99% of of the cases you have a subreddit especially in in the local um business like every city every major city or or you know smaller cities they have a subreddit these days. So in this example, let's just take this one. So if there isn't if there aren't any any Reddit threads, right? So you still have the Liverpool subreddit, you can go in there, you can you can post a thread using our platform and you can say, "Hey, what's a you know, can anyone recommend a good Luffang company in Liverpool?" And then once that's posted, you can then post a comment where you're promoting your brand. So inside if I show you the platform how it looks is so you so the way it starts is you can find these threads you don't have to go through Google search we have automated that process inside our platform so I'll just uh just pick your keyword whichever you want to search add that in here and then what we do is we scrape all these Reddit threads that are ranking for this specific term and then in here. The problem is you just see these two threads ranking but you don't know exactly how much traffic they're getting. Right? So that is also something we provide inside our platform where you can see the traffic metrics. You can see uh you know if it's if it's valuable to engage on it or not. In this specific case we see this one. it has 188 visitors per month and it's it's actually a great um thread where where a business that's operating in that area can just go in and engage. So if let's say any thread that that looks relevant and you want to engage on it, you just simply click on add comment and then from here on it's just adding your your brand name in it. Like I said, just do a helpful plus subtle brand promotion. And once that's done, you just click on submit. And what will happen is that we will use our network of accounts. Uh you don't have to use your personal accounts. You don't have to connect anything. And then we'll just post this comment uh on the thread. Um just like you know, let's say it's this account. So it'll be visible on that thread. And the the other thing which we have it's it's super helpful. Um, remember we talked about adding upwards to your comments. So, like I said, the comments that are at the top spots, they have the highest visibility. So, to get your comment in in at the top, you know, number one position or, you know, top three positions, what we have is we have built this feature where you can rank these comments. So, what happens is let's say you write your comment and then you just click this option. What it does it it analyzes the top comment how many upwards it has. In this case let's say we have we just see how many upwards it has. So in this case it's six and it just tells you hey the top comment has this many upwards and then based on this we just give you hey you need to send a few more to outrank all these comments and we're just going to be sending two upwards per day. So this is a drip feed option where it doesn't trigger Reddit's filters because the thing is for for older threads like one year old, 2 years old, this one's four four year old. The thing is if you post a comment right now and you just send instant upwards, let's say you send 10 upwards in 1 hour, the thing is Reddit can now easily easily you know just um detect this behavior and and remove your comment. So that is why we have this option where it's just you know drift feed upwards and it starts after 3 days. So again you can click submit and it's a one-time thing where we handle uh you know everything in the back end. There's a lot more like I said um you know more strategies you can even add replies you can schedule this. So let's say you you you add your main comment and then you say add the reply you know to your main comment after one day. So this way it's all automated and you just have to set it up once and this can be replicated across all these different threads you see. So for a roofing business that's operating in Liverpool you can you know some some are not relevant but a lot of the threads are relevant. You can also um cover more area more threads by adding more keywords or more you know cities. So that's just a quick overview on on how you can uh use all this inside a platform without having to search on on goopy.

James Dooley: Right. So I've now got a different question. So now you've just shown pretty much how easy it is to be using code reply.io. But let's say I say doward I haven't got time. I don't want to log in. I don't want to go in and start publishing the comments and replying to the comments and sorting everything out, finding these threads. You've also got crowdscale. So, could I then just literally say, "Okay, I own a lead generation agency. Can you go and find all the lead generation threads and communities and and like what post they are and go and submit who I am and what I do across all these?" Is that something that crowd scale can do as opposed to crowd reply?

Daward Khn: Absolutely. Yeah, we have so so we have crowd reply which is the do-it-yourself platform. So we have almost everything you know at your disposal where you can use the platform to do it yourself. Uh you write these comments, you write the content, you post them, you you track everything. So so we have crowd apply for that. And then we have crowdscale. So, this is is mainly for for companies and businesses that do not have an in-house uh content writer or someone that understands Reddit, how to write for Reddit, because even if you have a content writer, the thing is the the writing lingo on Reddit is a bit different. It's it's um many B2B or SAS companies that use our platform uh they just use this very you know um uh professional language I would say that we normally use in articles which clearly doesn't work on uh on Reddit. So for that we have the agency side of things. Um in that we we help you basically generate more leads, more traffic. Um if if there's let's say a negative um thread about your brand, we then do brand reputation. So let's say if it's XYZ reviews, is XYZ legit? So we we have some uh maybe a negative thread that is ranking at the top of you know on the on the search results. We we do brand reputation and then the other thing we also uh pro you know help with is increasing your LLM visibility on platforms like chat guty claude perplexity because Reddit um is is one of the topsighted sources and um that is why it's it's it's super important if you want to you know increase your visibility on these platforms you need to be on on Reddit.

James Dooley: So on there you've obviously you've mentioned crowdscale.ai AI. You've mentioned crowdrely.io. Um, all related to do with Reddit marketing and Reddit SEO. We've mentioned that it can be used for brand reputation management. We've mentioned that it can be used for local SEO, um, local lead generation. But what if someone's watching this and they're a SAS owner? Can this be used? Also, can Reddit in general help SAS for branding, for exposure of what they do?

Daward Khn: Absolutely. I mean, so, so based on we've we've now done almost 60,000 comments across all our clients, which is a huge number. But when you do this when you do this amount, you tend to see patterns. You you tend to see stuff uh that works. You tend to see, you know, which um industry works. So for that, we have I have this um just, you know, some small data that we have. So SAS businesses work super super well on on Reddit because there's not much competition. And then for for local businesses we've seen it's it's you know like for example in this case you have you have these threads that are getting you know this this traffic but it literally there's no one that's that's you know engaging on these threads. These are all older um comments. So it it just presents a huge opportunity where there's literally no competition because uh the thing is that if if there's a business so this one is is a really um uh low competition keyword I would say but let's say if it's you know for something like for something like this right just to just to for for a company for them just to be on this on these SERs they have to spend thousands of dollars if not you know millions because it's it's super competitive. It's not easy for for a for a beginner or you know someone that's just you know starting with their own project management software to be on these results with that. What they can do is they can easily engage on these Reddit threads that are having you know um lots of traffic and they can be on these threads from day one. So they don't they don't have to um be on Google. Obviously, this is for the longer play, but with with Reddit, they can just be there from day one. So, this is why it's it's really important for um SAS companies to to do Reddit. So, these are some of the um industries that we've seen that work really really well for um for Reddit.

James Dooley: What about um on there notes? It says affiliate marketing is tough. Just explain why you say affiliate marketing is tough for Reddit.

Daward Khn: Yeah, I mean, so, so we still have quite a lot of uh users that just use our platform for affiliate marketing and it's it's working for them. So, we have people that are doing casino, crypto, um there's like all all sorts of weird niches, but but yeah, they they do. But the thing is that it's it's getting harder and harder, you know. Um, Reddit is is just putting more restrictions. Uh, if you add a link, there are obviously workarounds. Um we we do have some resources on how you can circumvent that how you can do affiliate but but yeah like if you just want to build a good genuine business um and and that that just works in the long run then I would just recommend doing you know if you're in these niches it's it's super it's really great but affiliate marketing the thing is it's it's it's just short term you'll uh you'll obviously make money but it's it's nothing um long term. But yeah, it's it's in general it's just much harder than than if you're in in these niches.

James Dooley: Yeah.

Daward Khn: Yeah, for sure.

James Dooley: I mean, Reddit has absolutely exploded in the last few years. People love going to socials and discussions and to forums to get information. Um, I definitely recommend Reddit marketing for anyone that's not doing it at present. But Daw Khn, I've got a question for you. You're an innovator. You're always two steps ahead of the game. What do you think is important going into 2026? Like what are you working on? Are you working on anything else? Obviously, you've got plenty of SAS products. What are you thinking is going to be if someone wants to be ahead of the curve, they're they're a holistic marketer, omni channel, omniresent, they're embracing certain things to do with Reddit or they might not be doing everything. What would you say for anyone who's watching this in 2026 that they should be making certain that they're doubling down on it's working well?

Daward Khn: I think that that the traditional way of doing SEO is changing. We we still have Google and these search platforms. They're they're still, you know, generating quite a lot of traffic, but there's a shift. And I think um people that are listening there they they most of them have an SEO background and with that I would I would highly recommend um you know preparing yourself up for for AI search platforms like chat GBD perplexity because now the thing is we have we have companies that just come up to us and they're like how do we how do we rank on chat GBT? They don't know how it works. They don't know what to do. they just want to be there. And I think as SEOs, it's it's super important that that we're there um on how it works, you know, um because the traditional way of doing SEO is definitely changing. I think in the next maybe 5 years, um the whole ecosystem, you know, would be would be completely different than what we see right now. So, so yeah, just and that's that's what we're basically doing for uh for our own platform at Crowd Reply. Um, we're we're not just trying to focus on Reddit, but we're also trying to cover these other social platforms like Facebook, Kora or even other ones in the future. So, so that you know we we help these businesses um by engaging multiplatform um and not just rely on let's say Reddit.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. To anyone who's watching this, I hope you like the podcast episode that I've done there with Daward Khn, who is the founder of crowd reply.io. Reddit marketing is a hugely important part of SEO, holistic marketing, being omni channel and omniresent. Make certain you check out the link in the description. there is an actual follow on episode about AI search visibility where he's now going to be looking to be getting multiple channels like he's mentioned in Kora Facebook there could be other platforms that he can integrate into to get into those LLM rankings that could be chat GPT it could be Gemini could be claude it could be perplexity AI search visibility whether you want to call it LLM optimization whether you want to call it AI SEO or whatever you want to call it, GEO, whatever you want to call it. Dwood Khan's normally two steps ahead of the game. I hope you like this episode about Reddit marketing and Reddit SEO. Daw, it's been an absolute pleasure. See you again soon.

Daward Khn: It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.