One of the most powerful assets you have in any SEO strategy is other websites.

Whether you are using them as a source of links or finding ways to attract their audience as fresh traffic, a lot of search engine optimization focuses on how you engage with other sites.

Parasite SEO, at its core, is a digital marketing technique that focuses on using third-party sites as a place to publish your own content – “leeching” off their high domain authority and traffic numbers.

Many people engage in parasite SEO without even realizing that it is called parasite SEO.

Beyond that, many of the best parasite SEO techniques are fairly common sense once you understand Google’s algorithms anyway.

Of course, if you want to make parasite SEO work right, you need to approach it in the correct way.

What is Parasite SEO?

Let’s say you have written some excellent content that is perfectly targeted to your audience – but your website barely gets any traffic or attention.

In this case, posting the article itself to your own website would help, but not much.

That piece of content would generally go unnoticed, apart from some minor SEO benefits.

Parasite SEO involves creating content and posting it to other target websites, generally meaning high-authority websites that can generate traffic and SEO improvements to your own site’s online performance.

How does Parasite SEO Work?

Parasite SEO relies on one core part of SEO: the fact that a good, popular, high-authority site can help you rank higher in search engines extremely well.

With this SEO strategy, you are basically trying to write high-quality content that can be posted on other sites and platforms.

Through this, you are relying on the relevant and high-quality backlinks that you end up gaining as a result.

If this sounds similar to link-building, it is because parasite SEO is already something that most link-builders do.

You might have even been doing it on your own site without realizing it.

What Benefits Does Parasite SEO Offer?

Ranking well on Google often revolves around the authority websites can offer and the authority websites gain from other sites via backlinks.

Parasite SEO is essentially a way to take advantage of this and focus on something that directly impacts your ranking positions.

If you use parasite SEO effectively, your site can see a range of benefits in both the short term and the long term.

Higher Rankings

The most obvious benefit is higher rankings.

Link-building with high authority websites is an effective way of ranking high, and parasite SEO content is a way to optimize that further.

Even just a handful of links from high domain authority websites can give your own website a huge boost, especially if you use relevant and highly competitive keywords.

Reduced Penalties

Google has a list of disapproved SEO practices that it looks down on, and building links is one of them. Normally, trying to build links with direct payment would be grounds to get your site penalized and your rankings reduced.

However, parasite SEO is more natural. Since Google has no direct way to identify if a link was bought or earned, parasite SEO can become a safer alternative to going full black hat and buying links from every external authority site you can find.

Better Brand Awareness

Parasite SEO also gives you the opportunity to rank for more keywords since you are getting more links from more sites.

This can be a good way to rank higher for a broader range of keywords that more users will see, especially if you are choosing a lot of high-authority sites as targets.

Reputation

Since parasite SEO focuses mostly on building high-quality backlinks from high-ranking websites, you will be boosting the legitimacy and reputation of your site, too.

Having your site linked to by a range of trusted high-authority websites provides a significant boost in search engine results.

It can also make you appear more trustworthy to users, which can be invaluable for surpassing competitors that have existed longer than your site has.

The Snowball Effect

Like many other SEO strategies, parasite SEO is able to snowball to greater and greater success if you can keep yourself focused on it.

Good parasite SEO strategies allow you to rank higher, which makes your high-quality content more visible, which makes more sites willing to work with you, and which lets you rank higher in search results all over again.

Using parasite SEO properly can make it easy to double down, and then triple down, on your SEO success in the long term.

How to Use Parasite SEO

It is not actually that hard to use parasite SEO once you understand how it works.

Most of the strategy is simply common sense combined with some pre-existing SEO knowledge.

Just keep in mind that every business will have its own parasite SEO strategy, depending on what they want to rank for and the niches that they are in.

The Planning

Get Keywords

Keyword research is an invaluable first step for any strategy where you build links, parasite SEO included.

Make sure that you know which target keywords unite your business and audience. They should, ideally, be highly relevant keywords that you have at least a decent chance of ranking high for.

Find Target Sites

High-authority sites within your niche are the ideal target for parasite SEO content.

You want to post your content on a site that Google already trusts and one that gets a good level of traffic on a regular basis.

Higher domain authority means greater success but can also make it harder to actually secure a link on that site.

Check Trust Flow

Citation/trust flow flow is Google’s level of trust in a site. Domain authority is important, but you also want to know that the site is actually “good” in the eyes of search engines.

Checking trust flow with tools like Majestic’s toolset is not always necessary since it is not a real metric that Google uses, but it can still help if you are trying to choose between multiple targeted sites.

Plan Backlinks

Once you can make sure that a site is worth targeting, you need to start planning out the links that you want. It is important to plan out the content you want on the site and the pages/context that it would fit best on.

For example, which target keywords are you wanting to use, and where in the content would the link be placed? Is the content being posted as a guest post or just another piece of anonymously-written content?

The Content

Approach The Site

It is important to come to an arrangement with the site as soon as you can, whether the content is already done or has not been started yet.

The sooner you talk with them, the sooner you can work out how you want to handle the content and which web pages it is going to be placed on.

For example, some sites may only accept content in the form of a press release submission, whereas others may only want content from a particular niche. Some will not allow you to arrange linked content entirely.

Talk with them and work out the best options for starting off your parasite SEO process. You do not want to build up to working with a site that ends up not being open to parasite SEO content at all.

Prepare Some Basic Content

Good content is the heart of parasite SEO. You need to create something high-quality, trustworthy, worthwhile, and relevant to your intended audience – as well as, usually, the audience of the target site.

The way you handle this depends on your niche and goals, but remember that user intent matters just as much as more traditional SEO factors like content length.

No matter how many backlinks you stuff into one piece of content – or one site, only one is going to count. It is important to think carefully about the link you want to place.

Optimize Your Content to Suit Your Audience

Relevance is a massive part of all SEO, from social media links to the content on web pages. If you want to get the best parasite SEO platforms results, you need to target your audience and niche well.

Whether you are using highly-competitive keywords or simply relying on basic keyword research that gives you some niche terms to use, you need to optimize the content for your intended goal.

Think about what your audience is actually looking for, and create worthwhile content that meets that need. The better you understand their search intent, the easier it becomes to make content appeal to them.

Insert The Content

If the content is done and the site is willing to work with you, make sure you get it posted in the right place with all of the links intact.

It does not matter whether you are going for SEO boosts, referral traffic, or a mixture of both – you need that link there if you want to see benefits to your search results rankings and overall visitor count.

Make sure that your website’s URL is correct and that all target keywords are accurate.

It can be a good idea to double-check the host domain, too, to make sure you are not having your article posted on social media or a separate blog site with less domain authority.

Do Search Engines Allow Parasite SEO?

The debate on whether or not parasite SEO is allowed is a difficult one because search engines do not seem to have condemned it specifically just yet.

However, since it often (but not always) makes use of paid links, many search engine platforms are not exactly pleased about it when they find it.

Like most SEO tactics, creating parasite SEO articles and links that are completely irrelevant is considered banned.

The more obvious you make your attempts to bulk-purchase links, the more likely you are to have your site de-indexed by Google when they notice.

Is Parasite SEO Allowed?

While it is definitely possible to use parasite SEO as an entirely legitimate strategy, this is not really the intent behind it.

For most people, parasite SEO is a lighter form of other black hat SEO techniques that still dips heavily into black hat tactics.

Black hat parasite SEO is banned for a good reason: you are going against what search engines expect and intend for their rankings.

While regular search engine optimization focuses on natural links between one high-authority website to another, techniques and tools like parasite SEO go against this to create paid or arranged links.

Should You Still Use Black Hat SEO Tactics Like Parasite SEO?

While Google Search guidelines and resources tell you that parasite SEO is always bad, it actually can have some value.

The important thing is to use black hats very sparingly and to be sure that you are not being obvious with how you approach it.

Google search crawlers will notice if you are doing something that dramatically alters your rankings in search results.

The important thing about using these methods is to treat them like a niche tool in your toolset rather than the largest part of your SEO.

Is Parasite SEO Worth Using to Get Linked From High Authority Sites?

Parasite SEO and parasite hosting are great options if you need to get high-quality backlinks quickly, easily, and with minimal delays.

It is also a good strategy if you want to get links with high referral traffic that are not from social media platforms or other lower SEO-valued sites.

If used carefully, parasite SEO can be a great way to secure your new website’s position above a competitor and boost your domain authority to a level that Google favors.

Boosting Search Results Rankings with Parasite SEO

If you want to get your website ranked higher, then using parasite techniques like this is not a bad idea – as long as you are careful.

When used alongside other techniques (whether you are taking advantage of user-generated content and social media platforms or optimizing your website URL and performance), it can be a surprisingly effective way to gain a few powerful links that blend into your link profile.

Of course, like any technique, the way that it affects your rankings in search results will depend heavily on how you use it.

Is Parasite SEO A Good Strategy?

If you are looking to rank higher in search results, then parasite SEO is not a bad option. It can provide you with good links and does not require much more effort than standard SEO tactics.

The only important thing to remember is that you are always going to be running a risk of upsetting search engines, especially if you use blatantly disallowed tactics.

Just be sure you are using common sense when deciding how to approach parasite SEO.

Conclusion

If you are looking for a way to gain major SEO boosts without actually having to do anything drastic to your site, then parasite SEO is not a bad option.

As long as you are careful with how you handle it, parasite SEO can be a good way to quickly bolster your search rankings – especially when you have tools like Google Analytics ready to draw useful information and advice from.