You have probably come across the term parasite SEO in forums wondering what it was all about and maybe you saw these peculiar webpages ranking on the page 1 of Google ahead of very authoritive websites.
What is parasite SEO ?
Parasite SEO, also referred sometime as parasite hosting or barnacle SEO, is the process of ranking a page attached to a domain, taking advantage of its high authority on Google and hence able to rank with some keywords relatively easily without having a website.
How can I use a parasite page ?
As a landing page for affiliate marketing.
As a buffer page to increase organic traffic to your website.
As an entity for Brand management.
Not all parasites are equals
Parasites are not all equals in the eyes of Google. Some can rank higher than others and some live longer. Third party metric from Moz, Semrush, Ahref or Majestic can give some hint about the potential of a parasite.
Domain authority, trust flow, number of inbound links (backlinks) and organic traffic can be indicators. However you will sometime see pages which are ranking very well with a low authority and not many inbound links.
Do keywords ranking change with google regions when using parasites?
Yes. Like with a normal website, keywords ranking depends on the google region. We noticed that a japanese parasite was doing better in google.jp compared to google.com. It is our experience also that a parasite hosted in France was ranking better in google.fr regardless the language used (French or English).
NO INDEX META TAG, THE PARASITE KILLER
Sometime parasites are short lived as they get quickly being taking over or blasted by spam. Site owners can take some measures such as making the page not public. However the real killer is the noindex tag which will prevent the parasite page to be displayed on Google search results.
Can a parasite can also be a backlink?
It depends if some links can added to the page and if these links are marked as do-follow or no-follow. For a backlink to work and pass some SEO juice links have to be do-follow. Of course it is better if link can be contextual e.g surrounded by relevant text. Therefore parasites can be integrated in a link-building campaigns.
Does parasite SEO work in 2021?
Parasite SEO is nothing new and has been around for more than 10 years. Every year people are asking if parasite SEO is still working. So yes, parasite SEO still does work in 2021 but it is probably more work then few years ago like many aspect of SEO in general. Will it still work in 2022? Probably yes.
You will see some parasites more on the first page of Google than Bing. For the same queries, it is looks like Bing does a better job as filtering results so parasite SEO is probably a less effective strategy on Bing.
Best Parasite SEO Platforms
Thousand of domains are available to do parasite SEO , the most famous ones being Medium and Google Sites. Some web 2.0 like Tumblr can be used as well. Some social media platforms like Instagram can be used as parasite as well.
Can onpage SEO be done on a parasite hosting ?
It actually depends on the parasite platform. Some basic onpage can be done on Google Sites with tags (H1,H2, H3). Videos from Vimeo and Youtube can be embedded as well. In some platforms, on page SEO can be limited and in for some not possible at all.
Is barnacle SEO a black hat or a white hat technique?
Create a story on your medium account or on a google site connected to your gmail obviously belongs to White Hat SEO. It is considered Black Hat SEO when a website is hacked and pages published and pdf uploaded on the server without the consent of the owners.
Barnacle SEO pro’s and con’s
Pro’s
Can rank on page one of google even for some competitive keywords in a matter of days or weeks.
Most of the time good parasites ranks by themselves and do not require link building.
Most of them are free.
They can be used for any niche.
Con’s
Life span: some parasites can be taken down at any time by the platform owner or by a third party.
It is our experience that some parasites like Medium are not stable in the SERP: being on page 1 for few weeks and then gone completly before coming back to page 2.
It is time consuming to manage and maintain a pool of parasites.
Web design is often limited.
