Parasite SEO: A Black-Hat Tactic or An Underrated Rank Booster?

Intro

In 2024, every site wants to be at the top of SERPs. As the battle to outrank direct competitors continues, many are turning to ‘alternative’ methods of SEO.

For those of you who want to rank fast, generate more traffic, and dominate competitive keywords, have you thought about parasite SEO?

Those of you who have heard the term ‘parasite SEO’ will know that it is historically listed as a black-hat SEO strategy. The question is, are there ways to make it work without receiving a Google penalty?

With this in mind, we’re diving deep into the world of parasite SEO and will uncover whether this black-hat strategy is worth the risk in your next link-building campaign.

What is Parasite SEO?

Parasite SEO is an advanced link-building technique that involves using the traffic and authority established by one site to improve the performance and ranking of another site.

Parasite SEO allows a website to act as a parasite and essentially ‘steal’ the SERP success established by another site in order to avoid starting its SEO journey from scratch.

There are so many ways to carry out a ‘parasite’ based strategy, and some of them are a lot more common than you think. Some of these are:

• Uploading Blog Entries On High Authority Platforms: Publishing valuable, SEO-friendly content on popular platforms like WordPress, Blogger, or Medium increases the chances of consumers clicking links within your content.
• Leveraging Social Networks: If you post content on popular platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook that links back to the main website, you drive traffic from highly engaged domains.
• Using Review Sites and Online Forums: By actively participating on review sites and popular online forums with replies that link back to your website, you could encourage other people within the community to engage with your site.
• Contributing to Online Encyclopedias: Have you seen Wikipedia’s domain rating? If you upload and edit content on here, you create an easy opportunity to score traffic.

While it has been a controversial SEO tactic for a number of years, parasitic SEO still must follow the rules stated by the target sites on which it publishes content to avoid Google penalties.

Is Parasite SEO A Black-Hat Tactic?

This is a difficult question, as the odd promotional social post or article on a fast-upload platform is a common form of link-building for most brands.

However, when SEOs abuse this technique with a “churn and burn” approach, the lines between white hat and black-hat become slightly more blurred.

Black-hat parasite SEO is attributed to sites that continue to pay for sponsored placements on high-ranking domains, reap the rewards, and then start again on another site once their original target is penalized.

In other words, this is site reputation abuse. According to developers at Google:

“Site reputation abuse is when third-party pages are published with little or no first-party oversight or involvement, where the purpose is to manipulate search rankings by taking advantage of the first-party site's ranking signals. Such third-party pages include sponsored, advertising, partner, or other third-party pages that are typically independent of a host site's main purpose or produced without close oversight or involvement of the host site, and provide little to no value to users.”

An example of this comes from the famous black-hat scandal site Outlook India. While this site fell off a cliff in 2023, it once dominated the SERPs after using a parasite SEO tactic.

If you look closely, you’ll see that they ranked for everything from the “best mushroom coffee” to the “best water.” We guarantee they covered any topic you can think of during their SERP highs.

However, in 2023, Google caught this parasite website and immediately penalized it, which is demonstrated by the fact that it now has no traffic at all.

The Pros and Cons of Parasite SEO

Parasite SEO isn’t all bad, especially when it’s used sparsely within an SEO strategy. Let’s have a closer look at some of the pros and cons of using parasite SEO as a part of your link-building strategy in 2024.

The benefits of using parasite SEO:

• More eyes on your website
• Easier to rank for competitive keywords
• Speedy turnaround times for SERP climbing
• Build your content portfolio for white-hat collaboration

The disadvantages of using parasite SEO:

• Less control over the content you submit
• The risk of penalties from Google
• Poor brand awareness
• No opportunities to edit/update content

It’s no secret that not everyone is willing to take the risk when it comes to parasite SEO. When done incorrectly, it could mean disaster for your website ranking.

However, when practiced carefully, some SEO experts believe that parasite SEO still remains a successful strategy to leverage once every now and again. Especially if you’re looking for a site boost.

That decision, however, is up to you.

How To Implement Parasite SEO Safely

For those of you looking to explore the dark side of SEO, there are a few different ways to implement parasite SEO into your ranking strategy without entering black hat territory.

Search For High Authority Websites To Guest Post On

Before you start, you should conduct a search for some of the best domains that allow guest posts on the topic you would like to rank for.

The key here is to search for sites with powerful backlink profiles and high audit ratings.

Once you're familiar with the sites you’re looking for, pitch your content to those ranking for similar keywords to steal some of their juice.

However, if you want your quest post to receive a bit, ensure that it is well-written and relevant to the other content on the site. Creating quality content remains one of the most important ranking factors in 2024, so your target publications will be searching for this.

Try Out A Sponsored Option on a Reputable Blog

It’s much easier to get your content out there with all links included, when you offer to pay for your placement.

The key here, though, is to engage in sponsored guest post partnerships only occasionally and on reputable domains.

Websites only run into danger when repeatedly posting sponsored posts from domains that regularly engage in this type of transaction.

(Image Source: Digital Marketer’s World)

However, be warned that sponsored posts are often tagged as ‘sponsored’ on a reputable blog, meaning that your readers will know that you’ve paid for your placement.

Keep Link Building to Rank Higher

While your parasite SEO guest post will be visible on a third-party platform, it’s still important to put effort into the article’s use of keywords and backlinks.

If you optimize your article to rank highly for keywords relating to your business, you’ll attract traffic that is likely to be interested in engaging with your inserted links.

With an opportunity to also benefit from the mass of readers your parasite draws in, ensure that your links point users straight to your website and the products/services you’re going to promote.

To Parasite SEO or Not To Parasite SEO?

Now that we’ve laid out the risks and rewards of parasite SEO, it’s time for you to take your SEO strategy into your own hands.

The question is, will you choose to keep organically building up your ranking or take a walk on the dark side?