Welcome back, this is John Locke. Today we're talking about a concept that
you'll hear people in SEO talk about. Sometimes it is referred to as
Barnacle SEO. Sometimes it's called Parasite SEO which is kind of sketchy -- I don't
know about Parasite SEO. For the purposes of today's video, let's call it Piggyback
SEO. Because that that is closer to what it actually is. Barnacle SEO is a
good description though - I like that one. Basically what this is, we're using
the search ranking power of another platform in order to elevate your own
visibility. Wow this works, and especially in local SEO, you're going to
find that this is very useful -- but how it works is you're not just
trying to rank your site by itself. Your site is one listing, but you might not
be able to get up over Yelp. In many local SEO situations you're not going to
be able to get over Yelp, or YP.com or maybe it's HomeAdvisor, maybe
it's Angie's List or something like that. But usually it's Yelp in local SEO.
What you're going to do is try and be as high as possible on these other
platforms in order to generate leads. The whole point of SEO in the first place is
to generate leads, to get more revenue. If you know that you can put so much
money into Adwords or Yelp or whatever -- and get qualified
leads -- then that is is a good strategy. Now I'm not saying platforms like
Yelp or ThomasNet or MFG or any of the other ones that are out there are
a good solution for every type of business. You're going to have to figure
out what's best for you. Look at the actual search rankings, what's on page one
for your particular industry. There might be something that's you in the top
five, or a particular platform that ranks well, and you're going to try
it out and see whether you're getting leads from it. Now that's if you pay for
it. Most of these have a free profile type. Obviously where
most of them make their money is with premium placement. Yelp right now is
very very bad right now. For a lot of local businesses it's very much a
pay-to-play game right now. Not only is google Adwords putting four ads at
the top of the page in most search results pages -- there's four ads, then the
map, then you have Yelp. Maybe there's one or two or even
three or four Yelp landing pages at the top before you even get to
regular sites, like your website. Even if your site is the top site besides Yelp or
whatever other platforms are up there, it would still be like number four or number five overall.
That's as high as you could possibly get. You're not going to overtake
Yelp. It's very much a pay to play game in some types of industries, like home
services, home contracting, HVAC, plumbing, electricians.
There are so many ads at the top of page one of Google, then the map, then you have Yelp. So what
Yelp is doing right now in some results, is they have ten sponsored results in some
cities, before they get to the actual organic listings. So paying for listings is your best option in some cases.
You might have to pay for listings. To be fair, this isn't always the case. Depending
on what your industry is, there might be other methods of using Piggyback SEO. For example, I have
one client on my roster right now, and one of the keyword phrases that they're trying to rank
for, the number one result is YP.com. So what we did was
make sure that we got the correct profile for them on
yp.com. We made sure that they had the right
business categories, and sure enough, they're number one on the YP.com local landing page for that search term.
Another client that is on my roster, they did not have a Yelp profile
at all. But when we created that Yelp profile, they started ranking in one of their target cities
for that that same target keyword term that they were targeting. Yelp is number one and
then their regular listing for their site is at number two. So they are
effectively number one and number two, because they're using this Piggyback
SEO technique. Like I said previously, it is going to vary from industry to industry, what the
sites are that are ranking that you should piggyback on. Normally you're going to see at least one
platform that you can piggyback off of, one other platform that you can get leads from --
attaching like a barnacle to the side of a ship -- and rank on that platform. The key to
figure this out is, how can you get as high a placement as possible on those other
platforms that are in the top five listings
in the search results, consistently. Oftentimes what it has to do with is,
making sure that you have the correct business categories, so when
the platform makes a landing page for a particular service in a particular city, you are showing
up for that search in in those categories. If your business categories
are wrong on those platforms, then you you won't show up on their landing page. This is the
reason why you must get those things right. The second thing that affects this high placement on the piggyback sites
is having reviews. Sometimes there are certain platforms that let you
do Q & A, but usually reviews will get you up there. Whatever
the platform is,they will usually put the paid results at the top of each landing page. That's
the whole thing.You must decide whether you want to pay for leads from that piggyback platform, and
whether it makes sense. For some industries, paying for Yelp is
going to make sense, because you're going to get leads that you can convert into
cash. If you're converting those leads and closing them
out, paying for premium placement makes sense. In certain other industries, paying for leads on the piggyback platform will not make
sense, because the leads are low-quality. I will be very honest. There there have been times where I've paid
for Yelp for leads. However, the leads that I got from it were not very good. Yelp may be
a good fit for paying for premium placement if you're a restaurant, or if you are delivering home services. In those cases paying for leads or
paying for people to see you at the top of the page on Yelp, that might
be a good thing to do. Now there are other Piggyback SEO platforms out there too. I have a client
in the health space, and there is a particular website that has listings of providers,
that targets what they're trying to rank for. Every single competitor that
ranks well for this term is on this site. So one of the things that I did for
them was make sure that they had a profile on this particular platform.
Then I pointed out, people that get a lot of reviews on this
platform are on the first page of the platform, and also on page one of Google. So all the businesses that were ranking in the top
10 on Google, they had a Yelp profile, a profile on this other platform, and they had some local links. They had links
from other local websites. Some of those they paid for as an event sponsor. Most
of them that were in the top ten of Google, were on the very first page of this
other website which deals with their particular type of health care.
So I said, get reviews, fill out your profile completely,
and piggyback off of this platform, because it is currently ranking number
four for the term that you're trying to rank for. Yelp is number one, and this
other site was number four. This is the whole concept of Piggyback SEO. It's
using other platforms that are already ranking. These sites are proven to be on
page one of the search results. So be diligent to make sure that
you're on all those platforms. Whatever is ranking there, get on those platforms and piggy back. Then you're
going to get more leads, simply because it's a numbers game, and you're going to
get the leads from people clicking on those results.
Not just the people looking directly for a single service provider. Hope
that makes sense. This is explaining what's known as is
Barnacle SEO, sometimes it's called Parasite SEO. I'm going to call it Piggyback
SEO, because that sounds less invasive, and less like something infectious. It sounds more
like something that you would want, and less like something that you don't want.
Piggyback SEO. My name is John Locke. My business is Lockedown Design and SEO.
I'm here every single day making videos. I hope you will subscribe. That's it for
now. Until next time, peace.