Reddit backlinks are nofollow by default, so they won't pass PageRank directly, but they drive referral traffic and can trigger natural backlinks when your content gets visibility. The strategy is participation-first, links-second. Start by identifying 5–10 subreddits where your target audience actually hangs out. For a Toronto roofing company, that might be r/HomeImprovement, r/TorontoRealEstate, or city-specific subs. Spend two weeks just reading and commenting without linking to anything. Build comment karma above 500 and join conversations genuinely. When you do link, make it count. Someone asks "How do I know if my roof needs replacing?" and you've written a detailed guide with photos and a cost breakdown for Ontario climates—that's when you drop the link as part of a helpful answer. The ratio we follow: roughly 20 helpful comments per one comment with a link. Go heavier and you'll get banned or shadowbanned fast. Subreddit rules vary wildly. Some allow links in comments but not posts. Others have karma thresholds or account age minimums. Read the sidebar rules and lurk in the moderation patterns before posting anything promotional. The real value isn't the backlink itself—it's the traffic spike. A single well-placed comment in a 2,000+ upvote thread can send 500–3,000 visitors in 48 hours. If your content is legitimately useful, a fraction of those visitors will link to it from their own blogs or forums, and those links do count. At Ottawa SEO, we track Reddit referrals separately because the conversion intent is different from search traffic. Reddit visitors are often researching or browsing, not ready to buy, but they're influential. They share, they bookmark, they remember. Avoid using fresh accounts or posting the same link across multiple subreddits in a short window. Reddit's spam filters catch patterns fast, and once you're flagged, it's hard to recover. One authentic link that gets 50 upvotes beats ten spammy links that get removed.