4 Lessons I Learned Testing Parasite SEO on Medium and Linkedin

If you are working in digital marketing you probably hear the definition Parasite SEO.

I spent 40 hours and published 6 pieces of content on 3 websites to experiment with that method.

Two pages I published rank on 5th and 6th position by a target keyword

I believe my lessons can save you a lot of time⏳ and money💰.

However, I don’t like to call it “Parasite SEO”. Yes, I used other domain names to rank my content, but I created amazing content! I created a big value and these website will get the value from the traffic my content will acquire them.

I published 3 articles on Sitechecker, 2 articles on LinkedIn, and 1 article on Medium.

All articles related to Looker Studio templates as my main target keywords.

I didn’t build backlinks, however, link articles between each other!

Here is what I learned.

Sitechecker 🏆

Here I published 3 guides:

• Best Google Search Console Looker Studio templates;
• Best GA4 Looker Studio templates;
• Best Google Ads Looker Studio templates.

I got the best results in rankings and traffic on this domain name. You can check them on the screenshot.

All articles I published on Sitechecker and their search performance

I guess the big impact of that is the relevancy of the domain name. Sitechecker is very relevant to Looker Studio templates and GA, and GSC topics.

Publishing on a trusted, relevant website usually will cost you from $1k to $10k (except when you are already a well-known expert in the niche), but you can require a guarantee that nobody else will publish content with the same topic there.

Medium

Looks like Medium has more trust in Google’s eyes than LinkedIn.

My article about the Google Ads Looker Studio report template won the original landing page on my website and now ranks on higher position.

Medium beat my website and Sitechecker in rankings

In my niche, many articles from Medium are at the top without backlinks!

One of the articles that rank on top-5 position for a competitive keyword

Also important that:

1. Articles from Medium are indexed by Google much faster.
2. Medium has a feature to monitor your stats unlike LinkedIn, so you can check how many views you will get from organic search.

Traffic channel stats for a story inside the Medium

LinkedIn

The first article was indexed quickly enough but with UTM parameters.

My article was indexed by Google with UTM parameters

The second article wasn’t indexed at all until I added a few backlinks from my site and Sitechecker!

LinkedIn has too much competition for popular keywords and a big risk of keyword cannibalization. So, write content only if you find that there is no content for your keywords.

And in the first days content ranks better and then rankings drop.

Soon I will add some backlinks and will increase my rankings on these domain names from 10–20 positions to 3–10 positions, but now I know the hierarchy of the best platforms for parasite SEO.

1. Trusted relevant website or big media
2. Medium
3. LinkedIn.

And remember about the risks of parasite SEO.

Risks of Parasite SEO

1. You can’t see the stats of the page in the Google Search Console.
2. You can’t see the reason why the page isn’t indexed if it is not indexed.
3. On some websites, you can’t edit the content after publishing.
4. You can’t be sure that the website owner doesn’t change the content of the page

Check my popular Looker Studio templates for SEO & PPC

My other popular Looker Studio templates:

• Keyword Ranking Report Template
• Looker Studio SEO Report Template
• SEO Forecasting Template
• Free Keyword Cannibalization Checker Tool