Speaker 1 0:02

Hello and welcome to . Seo is not that hard . I'm your host , ed Dawson , the founder of keywordspeopleusecom , the solution to finding the questions people ask online . I'm an affiliate marketer , seo , and I've been building and monetising websites for over 20 years . I've built sites from the ground up . I've bought sites and sold sites in large exits . I'm here to share with you the SEO knowledge , hints and tips I've built up over the years .

Speaker 1 0:26

Today I'm going to talk about Parasite SEO . So if you listen to this point , you know what SEO is . So what is Parasite SEO ? Well , let's look at the definition of Parasite from the dictionary , and it is an organism that lives in or on an organism of another species , its host , and benefits by deriving nutrients at the other's expense . So with Parasite SEO , it is where you don't SEO your own site to gain a position in rankings . What you look to do is find another site that you can put your content on and leverage that site's existing authority to rank for the search strategy target in quicker . So essentially , your content is acting like a parasite on the host site to leverage . You know it's taking the nutrients the authority of that other site to boost your content in the rankings .

Speaker 1 1:25

So why would people even consider putting content on another site to make it rank ? Well , in a lot of cases it's where people want to target a very high competition niche or set of keywords and they haven't got any hope of doing it with a site of their own . Either it's going to take too long to build a site and to get it ranking for those terms , or the sites I've got aren't in the right niche and again it's going to take too long to build up the authority and the backlinks and the domain authority to get ranking on those keywords at any time soon . So they look to shortcut the process by finding a site that's got high authority . It doesn't necessarily have to be in the same topic area , because some sites , once they get to really huge site authority , can start to rank for all sorts of keywords that they wouldn't normally do otherwise , purely because they're just like black holes sucking in authority and traffic essentially . And if you can get your content onto a site like that , then it will rank for keywords that you've got no hope of doing with on your insight . That's the reason why people look to act as a parasite on these third party sites to get their content ranking . Now , obviously there's no point in making content for a third party site just to boost traffic to that third party site , because why would you do it ? You've got no gain from it . So everyone who's doing parasite SEO is doing it to try and achieve an end result with that traffic .

Speaker 1 2:53

In most cases , a lot of people doing it are affiliates and they are putting their own affiliate links into that content with strong calls to action to try and get people who land on that page to go forward and purchase that product from a third party merchant and then they make their affiliate commissions . That's how they monetize it . There are other people who do it for other reasons . Like you might be an e-commerce site and you're trying to get . You're essentially acting as your own affiliate and getting people to come off site and make a purchase . And some people do it for link building . But again , you know that's probably slightly less people doing that . Really , the keys people doing it are affiliates and they're the ones that are pushing it hard . As an affiliate myself , I can see the attraction of using this method because obviously you mean that you don't have to build a site which provides actual value to people to be able to generate those content and rankings and authority . That then allows you to put a certain amount of affiliate , monetized content on a site like that . You're essentially just going straight to the heavily , heavily affiliatized , heavily call to action content without having to do anything else around it . So I can see that attraction , but there are downsides . We'll talk about those later .

Speaker 1 4:12

Now there are two types of host sites that parasites go after . There are three host sites , so these are things like Reddit , linkedin , review sites . Any site that lets third parties post their own content can potentially be used as a host by parasite SEO . Now , obviously , the key attraction here is these sites don't cost anything to post on . But the downside for a parasite is it's harder to get that content to stick People . In Reddit , for example , you'd like to get moderated . Anywhere where that site can have its own rules about the kind of content it posts , they might not allow links to be put in the content or , if they do , you might just sneak some links in and people might come back and edit them . So doesn't it ? Yet you can be done , and there's plenty of people at the moment saying how they're having a fantastic success on Reddit by being able to post their affiliate links in there , but it's harder to do . You risk getting banned off those sites if the authorities that run their sites discover what you're doing and they don't like what you're doing . So , yeah , it's doable , but there are risks . But on the positive side it's free , and free it's always a good thing .

Speaker 1 5:33

The second type is paid sites . Now , these are sites which they're hosts , which appreciate that they've got these powerful websites that other people can use to rank content for their own benefit and actually let people do this in return for payment . There's a lot of them out there . One that's particularly well known is Outlook India . People have talked about that one a lot , but there's many other newspaper websites that have parasite deals like this with people Plenty in the UK and there's plenty in the US where they'll literally hive off sections and topics on the site and allow people to pay to make posts on there . This is often covered a sponsored content on the more sort of legitimate ones , but essentially you pay someone some money , they let you post something up . Now the costs can vary from hundreds of dollars to many thousands of dollars and tens of thousands of dollars , and I imagine that there's some deals , especially in some of the very high paying areas where people are paying potentially six figures a year to leverage other people's sites for Paris SEO .

Speaker 1 6:42

Obviously the benefit if you're paying a site to put your content on is it's not gonna be removed . You're not going to have issues with getting banned because you're in a you've got a commercial relationship there . So , yeah , that's obviously the positives . Negative is obviously it costs . So it makes it , you know , puts even more pressure on your content to actually provide a return . You've got to make back that initial cost before you turn any profit . So you know it's riskier in terms of making that money back , but you're more likely to keep that content up and have more control over what kind of content you can put on and what kind of content actually parasites put on the host websites .

Speaker 1 7:23

Obviously , we tend to be ones that can monetize well . These are often , especially if you're an affiliate these are ones where it's harder for the merchants to advertise during other means . Popular niches for this are gambling , diet pills and CBD that kind of thing , those that it's hard for them to advertise anywhere else . But that's not , to me , though , the only type of products that affiliates will use for price at SEO , but a lot will depend on cost for them to get posts up . So if you're going on free sites or very low cost paid sites , then you can look at products that maybe monetize slightly less . Well , you know , slightly lower volume , those kind of things .

Speaker 1 8:04

So now say you've created a site post and you've got it onto your host website , is that it ? Well ? No , in many cases , lots of people are doing this , particularly the more aggressive parasites . Well , actually , now start to link build to the content they've created . On the third point , your host site . Now , if you're a host website , this could be potentially a risky thing because obviously the parasite doesn't really care about the kind of links they're gonna point to the content because , say , it gets burned . They've only burnt one piece of content , they've not put an entire site down . Now , obviously a lot of these hosts have got real high domain authority and have a level of immunity from sort of dodgy links compared to a new site .

Speaker 1 8:54

But again , if you're a parasite , you wanna get into parasite SEO . This is the thing you've gotta consider . It's not necessarily just the content . You might have to engage in link building to really keep your post competitive and to really boost it . So what are the risks of parasite SEO .

Speaker 1 9:09

Well , you have no control after posting . In many cases , although some sites might you go back and edit posts , many don't , and you have no control over the site . A site , even if you've paid for it , could decide to change their terms of service and what they will want to accept . You know they may have , they may have troubles , any kind of legal troubles , and they will just kill your content off . So you have much less control after you've posted .

Speaker 1 9:35

The longevity isn't there . Like building your own website , you're not building an asset that you own , you're purely leveraging someone else's asset and then you have no control of that asset . If that asset goes to be in value , then if it was to be sold , you get no return on that . So , yeah , that that lack of longevity is a risk . Very competitive terms . You know after a while if there's lots of people piling in on a competitive terms using the same tactic , essentially you end up in the same situation where it's .

Speaker 1 10:04

If you're trying to rank your own website , you know a pure competition Can knock you out . So you might get , you might start ranking well with with a parasite technique and then someone comes along to the same terms just with a more powerful host , that there , that there are parasite on and then you're getting Knocked down . So the competition can still become fierce and Google are catching on to this tactic because it works so well in some cases that now certain SERPs are Just covered in parasite SEO , to the point that the results are just spammy . So rather than providing , you know , good spread of results , good natural results , it's starting to look spammy and that's the point where Google will start to look at it . So there's a risk to the entire tactic here , and that's not to say that it's never , you know , I think they'll ever be able to solve it perfectly , but I think they're definitely gonna . There's gonna things gonna be happen , happen this year , I think , in terms of sites getting knocked . I think they'll probably take the technique of hitting the host sites because obviously it's hard to hit the parasite Because you're literally just sitting on the host . But I think they'll start just by , you know , by killing the hosts or knocking the host back , to try and dissuade Particularly the more legitimate host sites , like the newspapers , from doing this kind of thing and sort of allowing them people to , you know , rank , using this technique . So that's a big risk , I think , there . So what can the rewards be there ?

Speaker 1 11:32

Parasite SEO , well done Well , it can bring very fast results , much faster than if you are starting a site from scratch or you don't have a site in the right niche , or if your site just doesn't have the kind of level of authority yet that you need to rank on on big competitive keywords . And there's a little risk , really , you know , because everything the risk is going on the host site . You're only risking that one piece of content . You're not risking a Huge amount of investment compared to Creating your own site . And I think , yeah , that is the Attraction to people to try this out is because it is low risk but potentially high reward . So I can see why it has built a lot of noise around it recently and a lot of people trying it . But that might become it's down for the fact there is so much noise about it . That then gets to the attention of the people who Essentially Google , who don't want to see their search engine result pages just obliterated by spammy content from high Authority sites pushing out the kind of content that they Aim to show . So that's , I think , is the reward . Brings with it the risk .

Speaker 1 12:48

So , on my thoughts on parasite SEO . Well , I've got no personal issue with people are doing it . You know . Each to their own , that's fine . I'm not putting judgment anyone . But when I look at putting my time and effort in something , I'm looking for longevity . I'm building , always looking to build for the long term , and parasite SEO to me Doesn't have that long term strategy . There are just too many risks over the short term . So while there might be some quick rewards out there and I'm sure many people are making quick rewards it's not building a long term asset that's going to bring you longer term rewards . So that's why , personally , it's not for me . But if it's something you want to try or it's something you're doing , then brilliant , I've got nothing against you trying it . And if you are going to try it , obviously prepare really good content with strong call to action . You've got to answer people's questions on any kind of product . You're trying to sell them and that's where just a little plug here go to key which people use calm , put in the product that you are looking to sell on a parasite SEO and page and we can give you all the questions people are asking on that product and it will help you build the content that might hopefully Bring you those rewards .

Speaker 1 14:04

Thanks for listening . I really appreciate it . Please subscribe and share . It really helps . Seo is not that hard . Is bought to you by keywords . People use calm these solutions finding the questions people ask online . See why thousands of people use us every day . Try it today for free . At keywords , people use calm . You want to get in touch , have any questions ? I'd love to hear from you . I'm at channel five on Twitter , but you can email me at podcast . At keywords , people use calm . Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SEO is not that hard . You .