What is Parasite SEO?
Parasite SEO (piggyback SEO, authority jacking) is an SEO technique wherein a third party publishes its content on a highly authoritative site with the intent of leveraging the site’s authority to generate traffic to the content.
Parasite SEO content is typically published on high-authority sites and large news sites, particularly those owned by traditional media companies. The content is technically a sponsored post, though it may not be clearly marked as such.
Even when marked as a sponsored post, the label may be placed in an inconspicuous position where visitors can easily miss it. For this reason, visitors may mistake the parasite SEO content for a regular piece of content published by the site.
For example, the parasite SEO content below is marked as ‘Paid advertising.’ However, the text is placed in an obscure location that makes it easy to miss. The text size is smaller, and its color is duller than other text on the page.
Content published as part of a parasite SEO campaign typically has little editorial oversight from the site that publishes the article. Sometimes, it may even be unrelated to the type of content published on the site. So, it is not unusual to find a medical site publishing casino-related content from a third-party publisher.
Benefits of Parasite SEO
Parasite SEO typically benefits the original author of the article. As for the site publishing the article, they will typically receive some financial compensation in exchange for publishing the article.
1 Content is Easy to Rank
Parasite SEO allows bloggers to rank for highly competitive keywords they would not have been able to rank for.
The rankability of content published using parasite SEO depends on the site on which it is published. If the site already ranks highly for similar keywords, it has a higher chance of ranking highly for the keyword the blogger is targeting.
2 Content Reaches a Wider Audience
Parasite SEO allows bloggers and marketers to promote their content to a larger audience than they would typically have access to. This works because the whole point of parasite SEO is to publish content on sites already receiving traffic and visibility from search engines.
Cons of Parasite SEO
Parasite SEO has implications for authors who publish such content. While it may not be evident in the short term, it will likely become an issue in the long term.
1 The Author’s Site Remains Obscure
Since visitors typically do not know that the article was published by a third party, they assume that the publishing site is the original publisher. This leaves the original author with little brand visibility as no one knows them.
Even backlinks from other sites will typically point to the publishing site rather than the author’s site. As a result, the author’s site remains obscure and receives fewer mentions and rankings than it would have if the content were published on the author’s site.
2 The Author Cannot Control the Content
The author has less control over the articles published for a parasite SEO campaign. This means the author cannot update the article at will. The blogger may also have little control over how the publisher handles the content after publication.
For example, the publisher could decide to delete the content or take it offline, even against its agreement with the author. The publishing site could also change its existing policies or introduce new ones, which may affect the content.
Relationship Between Parasite SEO and Black Hat SEO
Many bloggers consider parasite SEO a form of black hat SEO technique. However, this is not always so since it could also be a white or grey hat, depending on the SEO techniques used. Some bloggers even differentiate between both and use the term ‘barnacle SEO’ to refer to parasite SEO that employs white hat SEO techniques.
However, parasite SEO is generally considered a black hat SEO technique because of how most bloggers and marketers approach it. Many authors are only interested in the short-term benefits, so they find a site that will publish their content and then reap the rewards for as long as they can before moving on to the next site.
Nevertheless, Google launched the site reputation abuse update to deal with sites that publish parasite SEO content. Google mentioned that the update would affect sites that publish unhelpful third-party content intended to manipulate search rankings.
Google added that the publishing site usually had little to no editorial oversight over the content creation process. Google rolled out the manual actions component of the site reputation abuse update on May 5, 2024.
The update affected many large sites, including internationally renowned news agencies, which saw entire subdomains and subdirectories deindexed for publishing parasite SEO content.