Reddit and Quora links are user-generated links, and Google asks sites to mark that kind of link ugc or nofollow, so a link you post yourself passes little or no ranking value. Google's spam policies go further and name forum posts with optimized links as link spam. The value of community platforms sits elsewhere: their threads rank in Google and get cited in AI answers, they send referral visitors who are already researching the problem, and the writers who read them link to sources they trust. Treat Reddit and Quora as places to be useful and visible, and let the editorial links come from the people who notice you.
What Google Says About Links in Communities
Two pages of Google documentation settle most of the debate. Google's guide to qualifying outbound links recommends the ugc value for links inside user-generated content such as comments and forum posts. Since the September 2019 change to how Google reads nofollow, nofollow, ugc and sponsored are hints rather than commands, so Google may still use some of these links as signals. It has never said how much weight that is, and you should plan as if it is close to zero. Our guide to nofollow vs dofollow links covers how each attribute is read.
The second page is the one that matters for anyone tempted to scale this. Google's spam policies for web search list forum comments with optimized links in the post or signature as an example of link spam. When a forum user once pointed out that some Reddit comment links seemed to lack nofollow, John Mueller replied that link spam in forum comments works very badly. Platforms also change their markup without notice, so if a link's attribute matters to you, inspect the HTML of the live page rather than trusting a blog post (including this one).
Why Reddit and Quora Still Matter for SEO
The case for community work is not the link in your comment. It is where those threads now show up.
Google ranks them. After Google's 2023 "hidden gems" ranking work, which aimed to surface first-hand content from forums and personal sites, Glenn Gabe's analysis of forum visibility found Reddit and Quora gained the most, with many smaller forums surging too. A thread that ranks for your buying query is a page your prospects read before they reach you.
Google pays for Reddit's data. In February 2024, Google announced an expanded partnership with Reddit that gives it access to Reddit's Data API. Reuters reported the deal at about $60 million a year, a figure Engadget's coverage also cites.
AI answers cite them. Profound's study of AI citation patterns, which analyzed millions of citations from August 2024 to June 2025, found Reddit was the leading source for Google AI Overviews and Perplexity, while Wikipedia led for ChatGPT. Other vendors measure this differently and get different percentages, but Reddit lands near the top in most of them. If your brand is discussed accurately in the threads these systems read, you have a better shot at being named in their answers. Our piece on link building for AI search goes deeper on how mentions and links feed those answers.
What Each Type of Community Link Can Do for You
The platforms are not interchangeable. This table sets out what a typical link or mention on each is good for, and the main risk.
| Platform type | Typical link treatment | Main value | Main risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reddit threads | User-generated; treat as nofollow or ugc | Visibility in Google and AI answers, qualified referral traffic | Bans and downvotes for self-promotion; brand damage if caught astroturfing |
| Quora answers | Widely reported as nofollow | Long-lived referral traffic from ranking answers | Low-effort answers get buried; heavy link dropping looks like spam |
| Niche forums and Q&A sites | Varies by forum software and settings | Trust with a small, expert audience; occasional followed links | Signature and comment spam is named in Google's policies |
| Comment systems on blogs | Varies by platform | Relationships with the blog's author | Comment spam; easy for moderators to remove |
The "varies" rows are real. In our October 2026 test of free profile and community platforms, Disqus, IntenseDebate and the MaplePrimes Q&A community each gave a followed link on an indexable page for a brand-new site, while Medium, Goodreads, Substack (new publications) and many others gave nothing. That is a reason to check, not a reason to go farm comment links: a followed link from a profile or comment carries almost no editorial weight, and stacking them is exactly the pattern Google's spam policy describes.
How to Use Reddit Without Getting Banned
Reddit is run community by community. Subreddit moderators set their own rules, many ban self-promotion outright, and some require a history of participation before you can post a link. Moderators also look at account history: a profile that mostly posts links to one site reads as promotion, however good each comment is.
A workable approach:
- Use a real, named account. Say who you work for when it is relevant. Undisclosed brand accounts posing as customers are the fastest way to turn a thread against you.
- Pick three to five subreddits where your buyers ask questions. Read the rules and the top posts of the last year before you write anything.
- Answer without links most of the time. Give the full answer in the comment. A link belongs only where it adds something the comment cannot hold, such as a dataset, a calculator or a detailed walkthrough.
- Link to the useful page, not the sales page. A guide or tool earns upvotes; a pricing page earns reports.
- Watch the threads that already mention you. Correcting a wrong detail politely, with a source, does more for AI answers and prospects than a new post.
None of this needs volume. One genuinely helpful answer in a thread that ranks for a buying query can send visitors for years.
How to Use Quora Well
Quora rewards thorough answers to questions that already get search traffic. Look for questions in your niche that rank on Google's first page, read the existing answers, and write one that is more specific: real numbers, steps, a short example. Put the answer in the text and add at most one link to a deeper resource.
Two cautions. Check in your analytics whether Quora visitors match your market (country, role, intent) before investing hours. And an account that links to the same domain in every answer reads as promotion to both readers and moderators, so mix in answers with no link at all.
Where Community Work Turns Into Real Backlinks
The links that move rankings usually arrive one step later. Journalists, bloggers and newsletter writers search Reddit and Quora to find sources, examples and data. When your answer contains something citable, such as an original number, a clear explanation or a free tool, some of those writers link to the page behind it from their own sites. Those are editorial links on normal pages, and they count.
Three ways to make that more likely:
- Bring original material. A chart from your own data or a figure you can stand behind gets quoted far more often than an opinion.
- Keep the source page stable. If writers link the URL you shared, it needs to stay live and keep the same address.
- Track brand mentions. People will discuss your product on community threads and elsewhere without linking. Our guide to link reclamation shows how to find those mentions and turn the ones on real sites into links.
What Not to Do
Community link building has a long spam history, and the shortcuts still circulate. Avoid:
- Buying aged Reddit accounts or upvotes. It breaks Reddit's rules, gets accounts suspended and puts your brand name next to a manipulation story if anyone notices.
- Signature links and keyword anchors in forum posts. This is the exact example in Google's link spam policy.
- Paid "Reddit backlink" or "Quora backlink" packages. What they sell is a link that is user-generated by definition and often deleted within days, attached to an account that may be banned.
- AI-generated answers at scale. Moderators and readers spot them quickly, and a pattern of near-identical comments across communities is what spam filters look for.
How to Measure Community Link Work
Since ranking lift from the links themselves should be treated as zero, measure what community work actually produces:
- Referral sessions and conversions from reddit.com, quora.com and the forums you are active on.
- Brand mentions in AI answers for your main buying queries, checked by hand once a month.
- New referring domains that cite pages you shared in community threads.
- Branded search volume, which tends to rise when people keep seeing your name in discussions.
If those numbers move, keep going. If they stay flat after a few months of genuine participation, the audience is probably elsewhere, and your time is better spent on placements on real editorial sites that meet our link quality standards.
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