How Parasite SEO Works & Should You Do It?

Ever heard of parasite SEO? It’s a controversial tactic where businesses piggyback on high-authority sites (like LinkedIn) to rank for competitive keywords. 

Parasite SEO Works.

There is no doubt that this tactic works. Recently, a reputable SEO company lost its coveted #1 Google ranking to a competitor using a parasite SEO tactic.  This company had worked very hard to get this ranking (no, it wasn’t us, but I heard the story from the owner). They were knocked out of their position by a templated LinkedIn post.

This post had been republished multiple times, swapping out keywords to target different audiences. It wasn’t fresh, engaging, or even helpful. Yet it managed to dethrone a well-earned first position. 

Parasite SEO tactics leveraged LinkedIn’s domain authority to rank higher than their competitor’s website.

The post was stuffed with just the right keywords and bolstered by spammy tactics (more on that below).

What Is Parasite SEO?

Parasite SEO involves publishing content on high-authority platforms (like LinkedIn, Medium, or even forums) to bypass the hard work of building authority on your own website. In this case, the competitor chose LinkedIn, betting on Google’s trust in LinkedIn’s domain to outrank competitors.

While this tactic isn’t inherently spammy, this example relied on shady practices to achieve success.

Why Did This Spammy Post Rank?

When I first saw it rank so high, I thought – this looks easy, maybe I should just do it myself. It certainly seemed easier than what the agency owner had to do to get the #1 spot he had just lost.

I was wrong. When I tried to duplicate this strategy – it didn’t work at all and my post didn’t rank anywhere because I was missing a couple major things that this article had.

1. Spammy Backlinks

When I checked the backlinks pointing to the LinkedIn post, the links were about as bad as you can imagine. The links came from abandoned forums, packed with irrelevant links to industries like pharmaceuticals and gambling. And the great thing is these spammy backlinks is they boosted the LinkedIn post’s ranking while avoiding penalties for the competitor’s actual website.

2. Fake Comments

The LinkedIn post was riddled with comments, but they weren’t genuine. Many were gibberish or AI-generated, with no real engagement. Others appeared to come from accounts controlled by the competitor, who only commented on his stuff, solely created to inflate the post’s activity.

Fake engagement made the post look more popular, tricking both LinkedIn’s algorithm and Google’s search rankings.

When I tried to replicate the tactic, my post ranked nowhere because I didn’t have the “added benefit” of the spammy backlinks or fake comments. While I’m not certain you always need these things for parasite SEO to work, it’s certainly not an area I’m willing to dive into.  

Long-Term Impact of Parasite SEO

I like tracking things long-term. There are too many SEO tactics that work short-term, like linking to your Google business profile or building citations constantly, that unravel over time.  

In this case, this article ranked high for a few months but has been steadily decreasing over the last 6 months. It’s currently in position 8.

Long-term, I would say the best ROI is going to come from building up the authority of your business’ website instead of working off one that you have little control over.