Parasite SEO tin assistance you fertile for much competitory keywords, fertile faster, and get much postulation to your content.

But bash these benefits travel astatine the hazard of a Google penalty?

It depends…

Parasite SEO is wherever you leverage the authorization of an established website to fertile for competitory keywords. You bash this by publishing contented connected the high-authority website alternatively of your own.

There are evidently pros and cons to this approach:

Not always. But often, yes.

Most SEOs doing parasite SEO opt for a “churn and burn” approach. This is wherever they wage for a sponsored station connected 1 site, reap the rewards portion they last, and past determination connected to publishing connected different tract erstwhile Google penalizes the first one.

If you’re wondering wherefore Google mightiness penalize sites for publishing this content, it’s due to the fact that of thing called site estimation abuse:

Site estimation maltreatment is erstwhile third-party pages are published with small oregon nary first-party oversight oregon involvement, wherever the intent is to manipulate hunt rankings by taking vantage of the first-party site’s ranking signals. Such third-party pages see sponsored, advertising, partner, oregon different third-party pages that are typically autarkic of a big site’s main intent oregon produced without adjacent oversight oregon engagement of the big site, and supply small to nary worth to users.

Put simply, it’s erstwhile established sites people junk contented from parasite SEOs en masse. You spot it hap a batch with section newspapers arsenic they effort desperately to compensate for declining advertizing gross with different gross sources.

It “works” for a while, but eventually, these sites get caught by a Google update.

This is precisely what happened to Outlook India (don’t worry, it’s not a tract anyone knows astir extracurricular the black-hat community!). In 2023, it was a parasite SEO’s dream, seemingly capable to fertile precocious for beauteous overmuch immoderate topic. It published contented astir everything from “best mushroom coffee” to “best dating sites” to “best nootropics.”

But the enactment was short-lived. It got penalized successful September 2023 and postulation fell disconnected a cliff:

This is conscionable 1 of countless akin examples implicit the years, and it’s wherefore black-hat parasite SEO is risky. Unless you cognize what you’re getting yourself into and are blessed to play the “churn and burn” game, I wouldn’t interaction quality sites similar these with a barge pole.

But determination is simply a white-hat alternative: penning impermanent posts astir competitory topics for well-known blogs successful your industry. There’s thing incorrect with doing this. I’ve done it earlier and had large occurrence with it (more connected that later).

Let’s instrumentality a look astatine a fewer examples of parasite SEO. Specifically, a black-hat, grey-hat, and white-hat example. I privation to amusement you that the maneuver itself isn’t unethical but alternatively the mode it often gets used.

Black-hat: Outlook India’s leafage connected the champion escaped movie streaming sites

Between July and December 2023, this leafage connected Outlook India attracted betwixt an estimated ~25K and ~377K hunt visits per month!

Although the leafage did not state sponsored content, it was intelligibly that, arsenic the portion contained aggregate precise dodgy links to a movie-streaming service. It was trying to crook postulation into users.

The contented was besides implicit trash. ChatGPT could constitute better.

Grey-hat: Washington City Paper’s station connected the champion effort penning services

A selling bureau utilized parasite SEO to fertile for “top effort penning service”—a highly competitory keyword with a Keyword Difficulty (KD) people of 87 and lone high-authority websites ranking successful the top 10.

They did this by publishing a sponsored station connected a beardown DR 80 site: washingtoncitypaper.com.

It’s apt that this helped them to fertile faster and much easy compared to publishing connected their low-authority DR 4 website:

How did this payment them?

Their station features a database of links to apical effort penning services—half of which are monetized with affiliate links (see the highlighted ones below):

According to Ahrefs, this leafage gets an estimated 2.7K monthly visits from integrated search…

… and 1 of the affiliate programs has a 60% committee connected archetypal orders implicit $60:

Even if we presume that lone 1% of those 2.7K visits effect successful an affiliate conversion of $60, that’s perchance ~$1K/month successful affiliate gross for the agency.

White-hat: Moz’s blog station connected SEO services

In 2015, Ryan Stewart published a station connected the Moz blog astir wherefore helium stopped selling SEO services.

This ranked for the keyword “SEO services” (as good arsenic galore others) for years—getting thousands of monthly integrated visits arsenic a result.

The estimated integrated postulation graph supra shows that the post’s postulation lone dropped disconnected successful 2021. It ranked beauteous good for astir six years earlier that.

At the clip of publishing, Ryan ran WEBRIS…

Here’s the quality successful WEBRIS and Moz’s Domain Rating (DR) astatine the clip of publishing:

Given that DR is logarithmic, DR 90 is massively much authoritative than DR 53. This is apt portion of the crushed Ryan’s station ranked truthful rapidly and for truthful long. It astir apt wouldn’t person done rather arsenic good if helium had published it connected his ain website.

What did Ryan get retired of this? Unlike black-and-grey chapeau parasite SEO, the crippled present wasn’t to straight monetize the content. It was to physique Ryan’s idiosyncratic marque and found thought enactment successful the space. After all, Moz has a batch of readers.

Parasite SEO works for a premix of 3 reasons:

You payment from the site’s ‘authority’

Google representatives person said galore times that website authorization isn’t a ranking factor. But what is simply a ranking origin is PageRank (PR). Despite being decades old, Google inactive uses this to assistance fertile websites—and high-authority sites person much of it than low-authority ones.

For this reason, the mean leafage connected a high-authority website has much ‘authority’ than the mean leafage connected a low-authority website. This is due to the fact that internal links to the leafage nonstop it much PageRank.

You payment from the site’s ‘topical authority’

If you’re posting connected a tract with tons of contented astir a peculiar taxable (as large sites often have), your station volition apt person interior links with applicable anchor text from tons of akin content. This helps physique “topical authority” due to the fact that Google uses anchor substance to assistance fertile web pages.

Google employs a fig of techniques to amended hunt prime including leafage rank, anchor text, and proximity information.

You (might) payment from the site’s ‘brand equity’

People privation to spot results from websites they cognize and trust, right? This apt means that big, credible sites volition person an easier clip ranking successful hunt due to the fact that searchers spot them much than tiny chartless sites. (Or possibly it’s conscionable due to the fact that Google favors large sites these days?)

If you’re sold connected parasite SEO and privation to effort it, determination are lone 4 steps to the process.

1. Find high-authority websites ranking good successful your niche

The champion contenders for parasite SEO are websites already ranking good for the types of keywords you privation to fertile for. Here’s a speedy mode to find these sites successful Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer:

1. Enter a fistful of akin keywords to what you privation to fertile for (10-20 is plenty)
2. Go to the Traffic Share by Domain report

This study shows you the sites getting the astir combined postulation from the keywords you entered. For example, the sites supra each fertile good for keywords related to the champion effort penning services.

2. Pull retired the champion opportunities for parasite SEO

For a website to beryllium a imaginable campaigner for parasite SEO, it needs to beryllium unfastened to publishing impermanent posts, sponsored content, oregon beryllium determination you tin self-publish similar Reddit oregon LinkedIn Pulse.

It’s casual to spot the websites that let self-publishing; determination are a fewer connected our list:

The remainder of the sites volition typically autumn into 1 of 3 buckets:

• Competitors
• Niche blogs
• Newspapers/magazines

Competitors are atrocious candidates for parasite SEO due to the fact that they’re improbable to people your content—even if you’re consenting to wage them. There’s nary inducement for them to bash this due to the fact that they’d conscionable beryllium helping a competitor.

Niche blogs are bully candidates if they’re apt to beryllium unfastened to guest posts (like the 1 from Ryan Stewart successful the erstwhile section). This is astir apt the lawsuit if determination are galore authors with conscionable 1 oregon 2 posts successful the past fewer months.

Here’s an casual mode to cheque for this utilizing Ahrefs’ Content Explorer:

1. Search for site:theirwebsite.com
2. Filter for pages published successful the past 90 days
3. Go to the Authors tab

In the illustration above, Moz has published posts from 32 antithetic authors successful the past 90 days—each of whom has lone published 1-2 posts. This is simply a beardown motion that they judge guest posts.

Newspapers and magazines are bully candidates if you’re blessed to wage for sponsored contented and recognize that the website volition astir apt get penalized by Google astatine immoderate point. (More connected this successful the conception connected black-hat vs white-hat SEO).

Want to find casual parasite SEO opportunities connected Reddit?

Instead of starting caller Reddit threads and hoping they rank, look for threads that already fertile and permission a utile comment. Here’s however to find specified threads successful Ahrefs’ Site Explorer:

1. Enter reddit.com
2. Go to the Organic Keywords report
3. Filter for
   1. URL contains comments (this excludes subreddit homepages)
   2. Top 5 rankings
   3. Keywords you privation (e.g., ones containing “essay”)
4. View “Main positions” lone (this removes the treatment and forum results)

Click done to the Reddit threads successful the results and permission comments wherever it makes sense.

3. Publish optimized contented connected the site

It’s present clip to get immoderate contented onto the sites you found.

With places similar Reddit and LinkedIn Pulse, this is beauteous straightforward. You simply people contented determination with small to nary gatekeeping.

For newspapers and magazines (i.e., the black/grey-hat route), you request to scope retired and inquire if they’re unfastened to a sponsored post. In different words, you’ll person to wage to get your contented unrecorded successful specified places.

If you’re going aft niche blogs, scope retired and transportation a impermanent station (don’t connection money). Remember to take a competitory taxable with hunt measurement arsenic the full constituent of parasite SEO is to instrumentality vantage of “strong” sites to fertile for keywords you’d different conflict to rank for.

This is precisely what I did backmost successful 2013 (yes, implicit a decennary ago!) erstwhile I ran a precise tiny video accumulation institution with my brother. Because our tract was marque caller and weak, determination was a slim accidental of america ranking for a competitory word similar “video SEO”—so I wrote a impermanent station for Kissmetrics instead:

This station ranked for years, and attracted important hunt postulation until June 2018 (that’s implicit 5 years aft I wrote it!)

In fact, the lone crushed postulation appears to autumn disconnected a cliff successful 2018 is due to the fact that Neil Patel bought Kissmetrics and moved the contented to NeilPatel.com. My station is really inactive ranking determination to this day!

This wasn’t wholly a fluke, though. It stood the trial of clip mostly due to the fact that I wrote an optimized station that matched search intent and followed SEO champion practices.

Check retired the resources beneath to larn much astir creating optimized content.

4. Build links to your contented (optional)

Posts published connected “strong” websites volition often fertile good without links, but not always. In this case, gathering a fewer links to your station tin sometimes marque consciousness to springiness it a nudge successful the close direction.

Why lone sometimes? Two reasons:

1. Link gathering is simply a batch of work. Unless you’re buying links oregon gathering bad links (don’t bash this!), nexus gathering is hard. If you’re going to spell to that effort, it’s astir apt amended to people contented connected your ain website and physique links to there.
2. It mightiness beryllium a discarded of clip (and money). If you’re doing parasite SEO connected quality websites, they’ll astir apt get penalized astatine immoderate point. If this happens, each that hard enactment gathering links volition beryllium for nothing.

If you inactive privation to physique immoderate links to your parasite post, cheque retired the resources below.

Final thoughts

Parasite SEO (or barnacle SEO, oregon immoderate you privation to telephone it) isn’t ever bad.

Sure, it’s astir commonly utilized by black-hat SEOs opting for a “churn and burn” approach—but there’s nary crushed you can’t usage it for good. It’s perfectly imaginable to instrumentality vantage of a site’s authorization to fertile genuinely large contented rapidly and much easily.

Got questions? Ping maine connected X oregon LinkedIn.