Hello and welcome to SEO is not that hard.

I'm your host, ed Dawson, the founder of the SEO intelligence platform, keywordfupoleasercom, where we help you discover the questions people ask online and learn how to optimize your content to build traffic and authority. I've been in SEO and online marketing for over 20 years and I'm here to share the wealth of knowledge, hints and tips I've amassed over that time. Hello and welcome to the latest episode of SEO is not that hard. It's me, ed Dawson, here hosting, as usual, and today I'm going to. Well, I'm asking the question is Parasite SEO dead?

So Google have recently, past week or two, been doing some major updates when it comes to the threatened spam policy we've had around site reputation abuse, which they kind of oh, they clarified and first sort of um started talking about taking action on this earlier this year, probably around march may time, somewhere between early spring time this year and basically this is the problem that people have been complaining about for many years that sites with very big domain authorities, very authoritative sites, online search, lots of newspaper sites, lots of big media sites, any site that's really well known and has got a huge amount of domain authority started several years ago putting on content that's unrelated to their site. Several years ago, putting on content that's unrelated to their site, that's heavily often heavily affiliate monetized or display advert monetized. So basically they were using the fact they've got these very authoritative sites to start creating content outside of their kind of normal sort of topic areas, basically purely to try and benefit and rank pages because they can use the power of their domain to make these pages rank and then heavily monetize them. Well-known examples probably the most well-known example is probably Forbes. So Forbes obviously a very old publishing company with a very rich history in terms of what they did originally, came very big online, started pumping out lots of content that's not really at all related to what their core mission and core website was originally, but just that they were so authoritative they could put anything on there and it would rank. And most of these sites aren't haven't been writing the content themselves. This is the issue google have had that this content is actually being written by third-party companies, third-party providers who are partnering with these domains to have whole sections of their site just have, you know, essentially rented out to another company that can put content on there and it will rank and you know, then they'll monetize it so mainly with affiliate.

Now this is what's known as parasite SEO within the community, whereas Google they call it site reputation abuse. Now they said earlier this year early 2024, that they were going to deal with this algorithmically, but it appears they've had a lot of trouble doing this because not a lot happened. There were a few cases where sites were penalized earlier in the year, but the big ones, especially ones like yes, exactly, forbes is the big sort of 200-pound gorilla in the room here weren't hit and people were thinking can Google not do this? Are they ever going to do this? Is it all just noise? But this past week or so, a lot's been happening here and google have actually, if anything further, strengthened their, their spam rules around it. So they're now saying that you know, earlier this year they were saying if there was, if there was, a lot of first party involvement ie that the site that owns the domain, if that company had a lot of first-party involvement ie the site that owns the domain, if that company had a lot of involvement in the content editorially that these third parties were providing, then they might let them get away with it. But now they seem to have changed that and are saying Google, no amount of first-party involvement justifies third-party content abuse, and the policy update is specifically defining site reputation abuse as publishing third-party pages to exploit a host site's ranking. And they're also saying that it doesn't seem to be algorithmic. Google will evaluate violations case by case, not taking site claims about content production at face value. So they're essentially saying we're not trusting the domains if they just say, oh yeah, we're putting first-party editorial in. They're really being tough on this and there's been a whole load of manual actions gone out and a whole load of sites have been killed in the SERPs. And unless they're really the entire site, you know, google do seem to be trying to target this just down to the areas of sites which are, you know, essentially being rented out for this purposes of you know ranking.

So let's look at the policies details. What Google does and doesn't say is a violation. So, in terms of what is a violation, google has outlined several examples of policy violations, which include educational sites hosting third-party payday loan reviews, a medical site that publishes unrelated content about casino reviews, a movie review site which features content about social media services, a sports website that would host third-party supplement reviews without editorial oversight, and new sites publishing coupon content from third parties without proper involvement. Okay, so this is all where, essentially, these sites have essentially said to a third-party supplier here you can put your content on usually it's a subfolder of that site and you can put whatever you want on and benefit from our site reputation. Now there are things that google says isn't a violation.

So they do acknowledge that there is a difference between what is an abuse of practice and what is legitimate third-party content, because it's not completely illegitimate necessarily to have third-party content in your site. It can make sense. So they've given some acceptable examples, which include wire services and syndicated news content, user generated content on forum websites, editorial content with close host site involvement, properly disclosed advertorial content and standard advertising units and affiliate links. So what google aren't saying is you know you can't use syndicated third-party content. They're not saying you can't use user generated content. They're not saying you can't have proper editorial control and they're also saying it's fine to have editorials because that is like you know, for years newspapers did this before the web came along, but it were always clearly said this is an advertorial. You know, this is not editorial. We're being paid to say this and that gives people the ability to sort of think right, okay, I know I'm reading an advert here. It looks, might look like editorial content. Book is clearly labeled as advertorial, so you know that you can take it with a little bit of a pinch of salt. And they're also saying you know, standard advertising units and affiliate links is normal within content, so it's not anti-affiliate, it's not anti-advertising. They're not saying that people can't monetize their content. They're just saying it really has to be your content and not a third party that's just using your domain you know your domain authority to get boosted content, which is completely related to what you're doing.

Now, how does this impact the industry as a whole? Well, obviously, these sites, especially ones like Forbes, were making millions and millions of dollars a year out of this, and they had. You know, the companies that were providing this content have huge staff. You know we're talking thousands of people jobs here. All of a sudden, then, this is just demonetized. So this means lots of people working for those companies are very unfortunately going to lose their jobs, which is not something to celebrate. Okay, you know, I mean this is the law of unintended effects, really, I think you know, especially with the power Google has.

But there is a but here, to provide a different viewpoint, to provide content that is, you know, a smaller site writing about the same kind of topics that were being sort of gobbled up by these Parasite SEO sites means that this actually brings back the opportunity of smaller publishers again and publishers that have domain expertise and specialisms in these areas, rather than just some of the content that was being put out there on these sites or press sites was pretty poor. It was pretty quickie-quickie. There wasn't necessarily really amazing content or amazing in-depth reviews of things or points of view that gave people real insights into the topics um, yeah. So so yeah, it's bad for these, for these people employed. I don't feel so bad for the big companies. You know they'll weather it. It's the employees I feel bad for.

But I think it was open up a much wider opportunity within the web publishing industry as a whole, and that's from small sites to medium sites to even the bigger sites, to do it better. I don't think google's saying to these sites you can't publish on these, on these um topics, but I think they're just saying it's got to be editorial and not just a money grab, essentially. So, yeah, it's interesting. There's a lot changing. I think it is. It does open it up for the smaller publishers, which I know a lot of people listen to. This are smaller publishers, so I think it is a positive for that. I think it is going to play out in the long run, better for the web sphere, for it going to be better for web results, going to be better for end users in the long run, if everything isn't just being sucked up by a small number of sites. You're domain authority.

So back to the original question is Parasite Video dead? Well, I think if you're a big site and you're a known big site like Forbes, I think it's pretty dead. I don't see how they're going to come back from this because Google will obviously just keep killing them off if they do try it. So I think for the big sites like that, it probably is dead. When it comes to smaller sites, then the problem google have is, it's clear, at the moment they haven't got an algorithmic way of doing this, so they are doing it manually, so they're having to sort of knock sites out manually as they come up, as they discover them. So there's obviously an awful lot of scope out there, with the pure number of websites there are, for it still to be done at a smaller scale with sort of smaller sites. So, while it's definitely been mortally well, definitely there hasn't been mortally wounded completely, but it's it's definitely had a significant wound um, in many respects, I think, but it could still happen on small sets.

I'm sure you'll probably still see parasite seo courses out there from people who are saying oh, you just need to find smaller sites. You just here's the. I think google will always start knocking them out. Anything that gets popular, anything that gets big, they will. They will knock out. So there's a long-term play, stable play, where you are looking for long-term growth and sustainable growth. I think it's going to be very, very difficult now.

I think this probably will signal a shift back to more individual publishers, which is only a good thing. I think the more voices we've got out there, the better. The more that people feel that they've got a chance with their content and that these big behemoths aren't going to suck all that web traffic up. I think it's a good thing. So it's going to be an interesting space to watch. We'll just have to see what they do about forums next, because I think obviously there is still, you know, who would benefit from this? Probably the majority is the forums like Reddit, quora, that are going to benefit from this in the short term, and that's not necessarily a good thing because, yeah, I think there is too much traffic going there, but we'll see where it goes next. So, yeah, that's my thoughts, so you know. That's it for today. So until next time, keep optimizing, stay curious and remember SEO is not that hard when you understand the basics.

Thanks for listening. It means a lot to me. This is where I get to remind you where you can connect with me and my SEO tools and services. You can find links to all the links I mentioned here in the show notes. Just remember, with all these places where I use my name, that Ed is spelled with two Ds. You can find me on LinkedIn and Blue Sky. Just search for Ed Dawson on both.

You can record a voice question to get answered on the podcast. The link is in the show notes. You can try our SEO intelligence platform, keywords People Use at keywordspeoplesusecom, where we can help you discover the questions and keywords people are asking online. Puster those questions and keywords into related groups so you know what content you need to build topical authority and finally, connect your Google Search Console account for your sites so we can crawl and understand your actual content, find what keywords you rank for and then help you optimise and continually refine your content. Targeted, personalised advice to keep your traffic growing. If you're interested in learning more about me personally or looking for dedicated consulting advice, then visit wwweddawsoncom. Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SEO is Not that Hard.