Where traditional SEO still wins
For pages you fully control, traditional SEO is the foundation. Your product pages, pricing and docs need clean structure, fast loading and clear keywords. Nobody on Reddit writes your homepage for you.
Where Reddit SEO pulls ahead
The shift is in how people search. More buyers start with ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI Overviews, and those tools lean heavily on Reddit. Google even pays a reported 60 million dollars a year to train its AI on Reddit. So a single helpful Reddit thread can get you quoted in an AI answer in a way a brand new blog post rarely will.
The practical takeaway
Use traditional SEO to own the pages you control. Use Reddit SEO to show up in the conversations and AI answers you do not control. Measure both by the same yardstick: are you the answer when a buyer asks?
They compound together
The two are not rivals. A Reddit thread that ranks can send buyers to your site, where good traditional SEO closes the loop. Treat them as one system, not two teams. See the Reddit SEO overview for how it fits together.