Parasite SEO / Barnacle SEO - What is it?
No, this is neither a parasite nor a fungus or bacteria. If you want to read about animal pests, then you've clearly come to the wrong place, because this blog post is about a concept called "Parasite Seo", with which companies can Google Rankings can improve. This is of particular interest to small and local companies, as they can improve the quality of their services by working together with strong websites. Rankings on your own website. The goal is clear: more traffic (i.e. higher visitor numbers) in order to gain new potential customers.
Often the improvement of one's own Google Rankings This is associated with a lot of effort and (unnecessary) work, as it is becoming increasingly difficult to rank high on Google with a particular keyword that has a high traffic volume and to get onto the first page. And then what? Exactly: the visitor numbers and customers fail to materialize and all the effort was "for nothing". Great!
But parasite SEO, also known as Barnacle SEO which was introduced by Will Scott, offers you a simple way to bypass all this hassle by simply integrating Facebook, YouTube & Co. into the process. How? Facebook and YouTube on Google? Isn't that something else? No, it's not. Because Facebook groups, images or YouTube videos are appearing more and more frequently in Google's various search results, which is why parasite SEO is becoming increasingly important in online marketing.
Okay, understood - but what do I have to look out for?
The various platforms (YouTube, Facebook, etc.) enjoy a high level of authority or trust with Google, although there are of course different factors for each of them that are decisive for the ranking of your own website. For example, the number of clicks and the viewing time of a video are particularly important on YouTube, while likes, comments or backlinks are more important on Facebook. In any case, the advantage of videos is that they can spread very quickly by being shared in other forums or blogs. However, the quality of your subpage on YouTube or Facebook is of great importance, as a video should, for example, be informative and amusing at the same time and, of course, appeal to the respective target group.
The Black hat SEO scene naturally also takes advantage of parasite SEO by trying to improve the ranking of its own (spam) site on Google through spam backlinks, which unfortunately also works quite well. As a result, YouTube and the like even encourage them instead of penalizing them.
Of course, nobody can say whether a "parasite" page will always land in the Google SERPs, but the probability is higher, at least above a certain search volume.
Which pages can I use for Parasite SEO?
Some of the sites, such as YouTube and Facebook, have already been mentioned. Other platforms that can be used for Parasite SEO include Pinterest, which is particularly interesting for gift vendors or recipe suggestions, or Amazon or Ebay, which help you to connect with the respective Search terms to rank your offered products. Linkedin or Medium could also be used to distribute your own posts instead of your own blog. There is also Yelp for local search queries and, of course, platforms such as Twitter and the like.
I hope you enjoyed the article and that you are now aware of what Parasite SEO or at least you are aware that these are not vermin and fungi.
If you already have your own Experience with the concept, please let me know in the comments.
