Could Hive still be beneficial for marketers even while the value of Hive itself is down?
Rather than earning Hive directly, how about using publishing on Hive to improve the rankings of our actual web assets?
I have been thinking more and more about this lately ...
What is Parasite SEO?
Parasite SEO is a technique that was first coined by the SEO community around 2007.
At the time it usually involved posting to popular forums and the social media sites of the time, but in general, the technique involves using someone else's website to rank your own content.
Consider the people who write about their own businesses on the Forbes site as a big example.
I am starting to consider writing on Hive as a similar tactic though.
What Parasite SEO Involves
While the technique works by leveraging the authority of the host website to boost the ranking of your own content, there are several other uses for parasite SEO, including reputation management, affiliate marketing, keyword targeting, and branding.
Some sites, such as Reddit, might not send you clean authority links that Google recognizes, but you can gain a lot of traffic and the sites that rely on Reddit for news could link to you after gaining traction there.
This is one of the ways I think Hive can help - lots of sites use Hive content on their own websites.
Benefits of Parasitic SEO
For reputation management, have parasite SEO push down negative reviews and promote positive content.
In terms of affiliate marketing, use parasite SEO to rank for keywords and generate affiliate sales.
Parasite SEO is also effective for testing specific keywords and certifying if you need to do lots of on-page optimization. For example, if a phrase ranks on Quora you can likely beat it on your own site.
Black hat SEOs have achieved top rankings through blog network links, and other spammy techniques. Despite the use of "bad" techniques, they do not seem to catch penalties from Google.
Parasite SEO is a controversial technique, but it has proven to be effective in driving traffic and generating revenue for years and I see no reason it will stop being effective.
What to Look for in Parasitic SEO
It is important to note that parasite SEO is not about using subdomains, but rather leveraging the authority of root domains, so a site that gives out mysite.example.com will not transfer much if any benefit, you need to be on example.com/some-page/.
Google's algorithm updates and penalties do not affect parasite pages as long as you are using reputable and authoritative websites that already rank well. They can't afford to lose them from the search results in many cases so turn a blind eye to bad practices.
That said, tt is important to approach this strategy with caution and always prioritize ethical SEO practices for your own reputation.