If you are active on Twitter, you may have heard of the term “Parasite SEO,” which is being used by a lot of people. However, what exactly is it?
Parasite SEO is a technique for ranking your articles in search engines based on the authority of other websites. Simply put, it means publishing your content on sites with high domain authority.
But why? Because these sites are trusted, pages on these sites tend to rank higher and faster in search results.
Why “parasite”? It’s like a smaller creature living off of a larger one. Your content is the “parasite,” while the large website is the “host.”
Parasite SEO Websites
If you’re thinking of publishing your articles on these types of websites to promote your brand or blog, here are some trending sites you can use.
Since the last September 2023 HCU update, LinkedIn articles (pulse) are ranking higher on Google. And a lot of users have started leveraging LinkedIn’s new power.
As you can see below, I wrote an article for the best custom GPTs for bloggers, and it ranks at the top with a featured snippet.
That’s the power you get with parasite SEO, which is nearly impossible with a new blog.
LinkedIn is also ranking articles related to parasite SEO. What an irony!
But I don’t know for how long this is going to last. Google will derank or remove these articles if it releases another update targeting them (site reputation abuse hasn’t affected them).
So start writing good articles on LinkedIn and see them get ranked easily.
Medium
Medium articles have always been ranked on Google, but currently they have seen a boost. Articles written using AI were also ranking on the first page for major keywords before the March 2024 core update.
Even though Medium articles have gone a few positions down in the SERPs now, you can still write niche articles with less competition and they will rank higher.
When I searched a few terms on Google, I saw that LinkedIn articles are ranking higher than Medium articles. But LinkedIn will go down for sure, now or later.
Now, Google loves forum sites, and Reddit is the first choice. It ranks for literally every search term. So why not take advantage of this?
Head over to Reddit, create an account, and start posting comments or creating new posts. Search on Google, determine which Reddit posts are ranked, and use them.
For now, Google is ranking old Reddit posts for standard searches. If you have a new topic that hasn’t been covered much, you can try creating a new post.
Quora
Quora is the second favorite of Google after Reddit. The technique that you’ll use for Reddit also applies to Quora. Find questions that are ranked and write answers.
Avoid spamming your answers with links, or else your account will be removed. Make it look natural, provide real value, and you’ll have traffic for your content.
Both Reddit and Quora have strict spam policies and guidelines. So follow them, and you’ll have no problem.
Besides these websites, there are a few more that rank articles for specific types of keywords. For example, search for any movie download, and you’ll see GitHub, ArtStation, and IMDB.
These websites are not ranking for any other types of articles but specifically for movie downloading content. So you can try posting your content on these websites as well.
Till now, we have seen the websites on which you can post your articles for free. However, the real parasite SEO websites are the big media sites that accept guest posts in exchange for money.
This is why these large sites rank for any term related to health, gambling, and so on. They are taking advantage of their high authority. To tackle this, Google released the site reputation abuse update, but nothing has changed much.
Conclusion
Even if this parasite SEO technique is currently trending, I think that later on it will come down the drain. But no one knows when this will happen (if it is going to happen). Till then, have fun using this technique.
