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