r/seogrowth: rules, karma requirements and posting culture

Who posts here

A self-described newbie running a retreat centre's website gets patient, detailed answers, and so does an agency owner asking how others split their link building time. Terms like DR, GSC, EMD and canonical are used without explanation, but beginners who describe their site and what they have tried are not sent away. What gets removed is not the basic question, it is the vague one.

• Site owners and solo founders doing their own SEO for the first time.
• In-house marketers handed a traffic target or an AI visibility brief.
• Agency owners and freelancers comparing notes on link building, clients and reporting.
• Affiliate and publisher site owners working out what the latest Google update did to them.
• Tool builders and service sellers, who are open about it in the comments when it goes well.

Karma and account requirements

What it takes to get a post through in r/seogrowth.

What you can post

What happens to a new post

Where the most recent posts ended up. Sample size: 400.

• Stayed up36%
• Removed by Reddit's filters14%
• Removed by moderators47%
• Deleted by the author4%

Reddit counts a removal by the subreddit's own AutoModerator rules as a moderator removal, so that share is not all human. Held by AutoModerator means the post is waiting in the mod queue.

What happened when we posted here

We have posted here ourselves. This is how our own posts and comments fared.

Stayed up

97%

Removed by Reddit's filters

3%

Removed by moderators

0%

Period

November 2025 to June 2026

The rules, in the mods' words

1. 1

   No personal attacks

   It's OK to criticize someone's business, marketing, SEO, whatever else. Picking fights with people, though, is a no-no

2. 2

   No spam

   This one's straightforward - don't spam your website / content links on the sub. You do that, you get banned.

3. 3

   No blatant self-promotion

   Posts made for the direct purpose of selling your products/services will be removed

4. 4

   Don't share generic content

   Want to share a blog post you just write? Make sure it's something new and interesting. No one cares about "top 5 benefits of SEO" or "how to do on-page SEO" - that's been done before. If you have something unique to say, though, like a personal account, case study, etc. Then you're welcome to submit your post as a self-post and include a SINGLE link back to your blog

5. 5

   Self posts only

   Want to share a post you just wrote? Repurpose it so that it fits natively on this sub and submit it that way. You may include a SINGLE link back to the original post on your blog.

These are the rules as archived in January 2025. Rules change. Check the sidebar before you post.

The culture

r/seogrowth has about 84,000 members and has roughly doubled in the past year. It gets around nine posts a day, and the ones that stay up are answered: the median post has 14 comments, which is high for a subreddit this size. Posts are short, about 100 words, and 63% of titles are questions.

The subjects are the working parts of SEO. Backlinks and whether to pay for one. Internal linking. What to do with old blog posts. Why a page ranks on mobile and not on desktop. Google's spam updates get a news thread within hours. A growing share of posts is about AI search: how to get cited, how many prompts you need before a visibility number means anything, what a GEO agency does all month.

The defining feature is the moderation. Close to half of posts are removed by moderators, across every flair. Some of that is obvious, like service pitches and lead generation guides. Some of it is ordinary-looking questions, and our data does not show the reason for each. The practical reading is that a post needs to be specific and clearly your own to be safe.

What lands

• A specific problem with the facts attached: site age, traffic, what changed, what you already checked.
• Open questions practitioners enjoy answering, like which piece of SEO advice you stopped following.
• News on a Google update, posted early, with a prompt for others to report what they see.
• Original data, such as a small study of cited pages or a survey of SEO teams, written out in the post.
• Honest questions about link building and AI visibility from someone who has clearly done some of it.

What gets removed or ignored

• Offers of free audits, website reviews or opportunities in exchange for people dropping their URL.
• Requests for tool lists and agency recommendations. AutoModerator has a stock reply for the best SEO tool question that ends with the words topic closed.
• Generic guides and listicles, including lead generation how-tos and posts in stylised bold text.
• Backlink swap requests and most hiring posts.
• Vague titles that do not say what the question is, and income-claim case studies.

The unwritten rules

• Pick the flair that fits. Case Study on a plain question or a pitch shows up often among removed posts.
• If you sell something related, say so in the comment. Replies that open with a disclosure of what the commenter builds are accepted. Hidden ones are not.
• Comments run to about 38 words and are practical. Numbered checklists and what I would check first answers are the house style.
• Do not ask the room to recommend a tool or an agency. Describe the problem and tools will come up on their own.
• Expect a removal now and then even when you follow the rules. Do not repost the same text several times, duplicates are visible among the removals.

Self-promotion

The rules ban spam and blatant self-promotion, and say posts made for the direct purpose of selling your products or services will be removed. They also leave a door open: if you have something new to say, you can rewrite your blog post as a native text post and include a single link back. AutoModerator's own message says links are not permitted, so in practice even that one link is a risk. What does work is a case study or data post that stands on its own with no link, and disclosed expertise in the comments.

How people write here

Typical post length

100 words

Typical title length

11 words

Titles phrased as a question

63%

Typical comment length

38 words

Comments that include a link

0%

Posts that carry a flair

100%

The regulars

The accounts that showed up most in our sample. Worth reading before you post: they set the tone, and they are usually the first to reply.

Top keywords

The words and phrases that show up far more often here than in other communities, from recent posts in r/seogrowth.

• seo 139 posts
• backlinks 37 posts
• search 65 posts
• pages 54 posts
• google 73 posts
• content 67 posts
• traffic 51 posts
• site 56 posts
• ranking 28 posts
• rankings 26 posts
• website 54 posts
• clicks 27 posts
• backlink 18 posts
• organic 28 posts
• keyword 24 posts
• impressions 17 posts
• internal linking 12 posts
• visibility 27 posts
• spam 19 posts
• page 34 posts
• keywords 16 posts
• on-page 10 posts
• links 23 posts
• technical seo 11 posts
• gsc 11 posts
• rank 17 posts
• relevant 22 posts
• authority 16 posts
• organic traffic 12 posts
• articles 15 posts
• aeo 18 posts
• indexed 10 posts
• internal 22 posts
• blog 16 posts
• ahrefs 10 posts
• non-brand 5 posts
• sites 19 posts
• august spam 6 posts
• brand 25 posts
• queries 13 posts

Recurring topics: google, ai, seo, traffic, link, backlink, content, website, backlinks, spam.

Posts that did well

• Google spam update just started31 upvotes · 28 comments · :snoo_scream:SEO News
• I've been stuck at an average of 100 visitors/day for months now. How can I break through this? Would appreciate any advice! 📈24 upvotes · 14 comments · :snoo_shrug:Question
• Is 2.5M monthly website traffic for a new website actually achievable?22 upvotes · 41 comments · :table:How-To
• What’s one SEO factor you think people overcomplicate?19 upvotes · 21 comments · :snoo_thoughtful:Discussion
• How often do you actually check your internal linking?17 upvotes · 22 comments · :snoo_shrug:Question
• Does posting on Medium or Substack still make sense for SEO?17 upvotes · 27 comments · :snoo_shrug:Question
• Is there a way to do multilingual, multi-country keyword research with minimal manual work?13 upvotes · 16 comments · :table:How-To
• Desktop vs Mobile Ranking Difference12 upvotes · 7 comments · :snoo_shrug:Question

Growth

1. 20212.6k
2. 202315k
3. 202421k
4. 202543k
5. 202684k

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Common questions