Finding the Words Your Customers Actually Use

Most keyword research starts from a tool suggesting variations on a phrase a marketing team already came up with. Reddit keyword research starts from the other direction entirely: real people, describing a real problem, in their own words, before anyone tried to sell them anything. That's a genuinely different, and often much richer, source of language.

Why Reddit surfaces language nothing else does

A search-suggest tool shows you what people type into Google. Reddit shows you the full sentence around that phrase, the context, the frustration, the specific comparison, all in language nobody workshopped. That context is often where the best keyword actually lives, in a phrase a brand would never have generated internally because it's too specific, too colloquial, or too honest.

A great example: "burn-in worry" is the exact phrase that shows up again and again in the LG OLED report, used by real buyers describing their single biggest hesitation before purchase. That's a far more precise, high-intent phrase than a generic keyword tool would ever surface on its own, because it's the exact language the actual decision hinges on.

How to find these phrases

• Read post titles closely, not just topics. People phrase questions on Reddit almost exactly the way they'd type them into a search bar, which makes post titles a genuinely useful proxy for real search language.
• Note recurring specific phrases, not just recurring topics. A topic tells you what people are talking about. A repeated exact phrase tells you the precise words to use in content or ad copy.
• Search within category and competitor subreddits, not just your brand's own. The richest language usually shows up in comparison and recommendation threads, where people describe exactly what they're looking for.
• Cross-reference against what you're already ranking for. A phrase that shows up constantly in Reddit conversation but never in your existing content is often a real gap worth filling.

What to do with what you find

Once you have real phrases, they're useful well beyond SEO. The same language that resonates in a Reddit thread tends to resonate in ad copy, on a landing page, and in a sales conversation, because it's the language a real buyer already uses to describe their own situation, not the language a brand defaults to describing itself.

The British Airways report shows this well too: the community's own shorthand for the airline, calling it "Bloody Awful," is exactly the kind of specific, high-recognition phrase that would never come out of a traditional keyword tool, but instantly resonates with anyone who's seen it used.

Where Frankly fits

Category Language Guide is built specifically for this: the real vocabulary of a category, the words people use, the words they never use, and the phrases that instantly read as genuine versus the ones that mark a brand as an outsider.

Frank Analysis surfaces real quotes linked back to their source thread as part of every report, so the exact phrasing behind a finding is always visible, not paraphrased into something more generic.

You can see this kind of language surfacing naturally in the LG OLED and British Airways reports, both free to read without an account.

FAQ

How is Reddit keyword research different from traditional SEO keyword research?

Traditional keyword tools show search volume for phrases people already type into Google. Reddit shows the full context around real language, often surfacing specific, high-intent phrases before they'd ever show up in a keyword tool's suggestions.

Can I use these phrases directly in ad copy?

Often, yes, and they tend to perform well precisely because they're already the customer's own language rather than a brand's paraphrase of it. Worth checking the phrase reads naturally outside its original context before using it directly.

Do I have to read every thread manually to find these phrases?

Not necessarily. Reading widely by hand works and genuinely builds intuition for a category's language, but a tool that surfaces recurring phrases automatically turns the same research into minutes.

Related reading: see how this connects to broader market research in using Reddit for market research, and how to find the right communities to research in the first place in subreddit research.