What is Parasite SEO? – 2018 Parasite SEO Guide

I recently got this question in a Facebook live stream.

“Almin,” asked me “What is parasite SEO?!

Immediately, I knew I had already heard of it before.

I’ve heard a ton of people talking about it.

In this post I wanted to talk about, is parasite SEO relevant in 2018 and does it still work?

First of all…

What is parasite SEO?

When you say “parasite SEO”, it doesn’t sound like a clean SEO tactic you’d want to use.

It kinda sounds like a tactic from 2003 that’s completely outdated.

Parasite SEO is creating and ranking content on a subdomain.

For example, .Medium.com, .Weebly.com, .Squidoo.com etc. These are all subdomains.

So why exactly would you create and rank content on someone else’s domain?

Why not focus on ranking your site’s pages instead?

You see, parasite SEO was created because people had a tough time ranking their own sites.

So, what did they do instead?

They went ahead and leveraged the authority of other people’s sites so they could rank higher on Google.

That’s pretty much the secret sauce of parasite SEO. Leveraging other people’s websites to rank your own.

In their parasite, people would give a call to action for people to visit their site or even sell products and services on the parasite.

Honestly… this is a really smart way to do SEO if you ask me.

So the big question is…

Does parasite SEO work in 2018?

In short: Yes, parasite SEO still works in 2018.

HOWEVER…

…it’s nowhere near as effective as it was a few years ago.

You can’t sign up to an authoritative subdomain, put up some content, blast it with links, and expect to rank.

In fact, if you do what I just described, you’d get slapped with a Google penalty and you won’t even rank your parasite.

You need to treat the subdomain or web 2.0 as it can be referred to, as a real blog.

• You need to fill the blog with helpful content
• Do the on-page SEO
• Create high-quality backlinks.

By doing this, you’ll have a better chance of ranking your parasite.

So how do you create a parasite that actually ranks?

It’s actually simpler than you think.

Just treat the parasite like your own blog.

Take your time to create content, make sure it’s helpful, and build high-quality backlinks like social profiles.

By building social profiles to your parasite, you actually make it look like a real website and it will get indexed by Google.

With a parasite, you can let the link building quality slip a little.

You see, normally I’m strongly against buying links from Fiverr because they can really damage your site, despite what the vendor days about their gig.

You can purchase some links from Fiverr like web 2.0s and social shares to really give your parasite a boost.

Choosing how to monetise the parasite

First, you need to figure out how you’re going to make money from your parasite.

There are a ton of ways to do this.

If you’re new to this, I would recommend doing affiliate marketing. This is where you’re promoting someone else’s product and getting commisions from each sale.

Make sure you research which product you want to promote.

Make sure the product is high-quality, has lots of positive reviews and something you would actually buy.

If it’s not a product that you would buy, then why would someone else?

There are a ton of different affiliate networks you can choose from.

Don’t want to do affiliate marketing?

No worries.

If you have your own product or another idea in mind, just do that.

Keyword research

When creating your parasite, you need to do the correct keyword research.

If you’re new to this, make sure you go ahead and pick a low competition keyword.

When doing your keyword research, I would recommend staying away from the keyword tools to give you a competition score.

Instead, you should type in the keyword you may want to target into Google and see what the competition looks like.

Creating the content

When you’re creating content for your parasite, it needs to be super helpful and enjoyable content.

Don’t just hire some writer from the Philippines or England.

The person who cares about your content more than any other writer in the world is you.

So you will do a better job than any other writer out there.

Remember…

…you want the content to be spectacular.

I’m not talking about just publishing a 500 word article. (You can do that if you believe 500 words will be enough)

Go above and beyond, create a 3,000 word article or maybe even 5,000 words. Heck, you can go even higher.

The more content, the better.

HOWEVER…

You don’t want the content to be fluff you just added. This will make the bounce rates go crazy and you’ll have a tough time ranking.

You want to make sure the content is as lean as possible. Make sure the reader is constantly getting all the meaty, juicy details.

Make sure you have multimedia like images and videos in your content.

Make some jokes in the content and show your personality. You want this piece of content to be absolutely killer!

Sure, it’s going to be a lot of work, but no one got anything great by being lazy.

Take it one bite at a time. You don’t have to pump it all out in one day or a week.

By doing this, it’s going to ensure low bounce rates, better conversions and rankings will actually stick.

Pick a link building budget

You’re not going to be doing all the link building yourself. Or at least you don’t have to.

You see, you’re not going to be going to some expensive marketing company to do outreach and get you links.

No.

Instead, you’ll be using sites like Fiverr and Konker.

WHY?

Because they’re cheaper and you can let the quality of your links slip.

But don’t get the wrong idea…

…You can’t just fire up a tool like GSA and blast the crap out of your parasite.

You will need to get some high-quality links. Or at least what passes as high-quality on sites like Fiverr.

I would recommend starting with $60 and working your way up. I would try not to go over $300 unless I’m seeing a return.

The links to buy:

Social profiles – Remember, you want your parasite to look like a legit site. Make sure you don’t point them at the article you want to rank, this is a big mistake. Make sure you point it at your homepage. If there is no homepage on your parasite, point the links at your profile.

Social signals – This is a tricky one. You don’t want some crappy social signal gig from sites like Fiverr. You want manual social signals to be made. I would recommend going to PBN Butler to get your social signals.

At this point you want your parasite to sit for a week. Don’t build any links until then.

20 Tumblr web 2.0s – Tumblr is an epic web 2.0 to use to really give you a boost in the SERPs.

Other web 2.0s – It’s important to get some other web 2.0 links to really diversify your link profile.

Diversity links – The are a bunch of different links to help diversify your link profile. Links from image sharing sites, powerpoints, video sites and more. You get the idea.

If you feel like you need to purchase more links, go ahead and do that.

Anchor text

The anchor text is going to be pretty simple:

50% Branded

10% Naked URL

30% Miscellaneous terms

10% LSI keywords

You don’t have to have the exact percentage of anchor text shown above. I just wanted to give you an idea of what it would look like.

Watch me create an effective parasite/web 2.0

Do you want to learn how to create an effective parasite step by step?

Do you want to learn how to pick a great product for your parasite?

How to do the keyword research, create the content and more?

Are you having a tough time ranking in the Google search engine?

If you want a solution, check out the SEO Blueprint.