Link Building 101: Taking Advantage of Quora and Reddit to Build E-A-T in 2021
About the Author: Ioan Gerosanu
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Link building is an ever-evolving process. Over the past years, it’s been shifting from simply dropping tons of spammy links all over the web to spending extensive amounts of time for just a couple of relevant opportunities.
Nowadays, link building is more about developing multiple strategies in order to develop a healthy backlink profile. We’ve previously discussed using Google Alerts and online forums for quick wins in the game.
This article is about building E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) through contributing to Quora and Reddit threads. For those reading with a skeptical mind, John Muller from Google confirmed that links from Quora are definitely picked up.
What is E-A-T and why should I care?
E-A-T is a ranking factor launched by Google in 2018 and represents a set of website quality standards to be applied by quality testers when rating websites.
It was initially aimed at YMYL (YourMoneyYourLife) websites, precisely topics around finance and personal health. However, it’s now part of Google’s core algorithm and has an impact on a wider range of niches.
With roughly 547200 new websites created each day, it makes sense that Google had to come up with a highly evolved algorithm to reward quality and trustworthy websites while demoting pure spam.
Quora and Reddit are considered low-hanging fruits in the process of increasing your E-A-T scores and it comes as no surprise, but you should take into consideration a couple of dos and don’ts.
Taking the time to develop a professional user profile
Rushing this step won’t help you in the long run and could compromise your entire campaign for both Quora and Reddit. There are millions of fake profiles, bots, and spammers so you need to make sure your profile stands out from the crowd.
Your profile should, at the very least, display the following:
- Your real full name and/or username – avoid as much as possible weird symbols or numbers as they are usually used by spammers.
- A real photo of yourself as the profile picture – use a relevant image to the niche you are planning to contribute to.
- Biography – education, experience, maybe something funny, and profile links from other relevant social networking sites.
What does it take to successfully contribute to Quora and Reddit threads?
Both Quora and Reddit developed highly sophisticated anti-spam systems so that threads are not flooded with useless information and self-promotion comments. Without further ado, here’s our list of dos and don’ts when it comes to using Quora and Reddit for link building:
- Quickly scan the entire thread and understand where the conversation stands. Your reply should flow naturally with the rest of the messages.
- Avoid beginning your reply promoting an external resource – it will automatically be picked as spam.
- Show that you’ve done your homework by referencing high-quality sources for that topic.
- Simply replying with a bunch of random words or pitching a mundane sentence will most likely get your comment deleted.
- Format your text so that it’s easy to read and understand – use bullet points, stylize text and even add visual content if possible.
- Link to your website as naturally as you can – first prove your expertise on the topic, add value to the thread and avoid being too salesy. We recommend you reference your website as a resource within the body or at the end of the post.
- It’s not all about placing backlinks – building E-A-T is a delicate and nuanced process, sometimes all it takes is to contribute with a high-quality reply and help to answer the question.
- Make sure your quote’s sources are always disclosed – plagiarism is not acceptable, I hope that comes as no surprise.
Wrapping up
I hope that this article managed to remove some of the stigmas Quora and Reddit have when it comes to backlinks, SEO, and building an online presence.
Nonetheless, as emphasized in the previous article of the series, this strategy can turn out to be tremendously helpful when you take the time to understand the game and avoid toxic self-promotion.
Using Quora and Reddit for link building in 2021 is no easy feat, but I’m sure by now you’re understood that link building is a marathon, not a sprint!
Ioan Gerosanu
SEO specialist and part of the Bold Digital Architects team for more than 4 years now!
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SEO specialist and part of the Bold Digital Architects team for more than 4 years now!
