Everything on the internet today is concerned with SEO, Rankings, Organic traffic, etc. This can be seen as an indicator of the level of competition occurring in order to achieve these targets. Even though keywords and quality content play a major role in determining the ranking of your website, it won’t be practically possible for your website to be ranked for all the keywords that are out there. Especially, if you are a beginner, setting up baby steps for your business, then it would be even more difficult to keep your pace with all the competition out there in the virtual world.

It is then that you can try out something like the Barnacle strategy. When getting ranked for potential competitive keywords is not just a mere possibility, you can try to be like a barnacle, by getting attached or connected to big and authority websites. If you are not familiar with this term and its strategies, we are going to get it fixed right now. 

Barnacle SEO

Barnacle SEO is one such strategy that will help in leveraging the authority of the top-rank websites for keywords with higher competition in order to boost your products, brand, or content. In simple words, it is just like a game of leverage where you could make use of a highly visible influential website to market your business or content. This will help you in getting ranked by giving you an improved exposure which you may not possibly achieve otherwise. You can do this by opting for certain activities for example – review marketing, guest blogging, appearing in roundup posts, local listing profile optimization, brand mentions, etc. But remember to do an in-depth study on the mechanisms and strategies of this system because this can be confusing as well as misleading. These activities do not imply that you are being a parasite on the success of the other party. The quality and the ranking potential of the content you intend to put forth should align with the website you are targeting.

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The way it works is when you are implementing barnacle SEO you do not focus on optimizing your website but instead you are focusing or targeting success for other websites. You might feel doubtful about this and wonder “ But why would I do that?”. You are engaging with them because they hold the highest ranks for the keywords that give the most competition that you are not able to fight for on your own. In order to set targets on complementary or diverse search-intent keywords, you should try the barnacle SEO and this will help provide you and your brand additional hype. 

Headstart to Barnacle SEO Strategy

Barnacles are basically anthropoids that inhabit seawater mostly. They try to establish symbiotic relationships with other creators like whales. This way, you get the respect and power those creatures receive. If you can’t grow up to them, simply use a part of their privilege to shoot your growth. Therefore it is always the giants that are targeted in this strategy. 

You could be the least potential for them for quite many reasons. To know this from the start, begin with a keyword search. You can avail of a number of tools that will help you analyze the potentials of keywords. And the reason why you can’t compete for the highest-ranked keywords could be-

• The lack of domain authority for your website
• The search intends of those keywords might not align with what your website offers or aims.
• The lack of time, efforts, and sources to invest in them. 

Now, what’s left to do? You can still crack the codes by the barnacle strategy benefiting from websites that rank 1 in SERP for those keywords to promote your site and content to millions out there. 

Decoding Strategies and Techniques

 Now that we are familiarized with the term Barnacle SEO and its benefits, without further do’s let’s jump into ways to put the strategy to use.

1. Keywords Analysis 

We have already discussed how keywords play a major role in the Barnacle strategy. So the first step has to be on studying the potential keywords related to your brand/product/services. You will get to know the highest performing keywords and the level of competition it offers. You can get ‘n’ number of tools to do keyword research, like Soovle, Google Search Console, Ahrefs, Google keyword planner, etc. 

2. High-Rank Directory Sites  

Barnacle SEO strategy is mainly targeted at the whales and how these whales will help you achieve your targeted growth. So, look for the major domain authority sites that will match with your website and look up to reach and collaborate with them. You can see the top search results displayed and the big shot sites at the forefront.

 If it is a directory site, you can go ahead and request them to have you and your business get listed on their website. If it is a website ( Eg: Moz ) you can ask them for an opportunity to post your content on their website. We will cover this in detail in the next point.

3. Guest Blogging 

Guest Blogging / Posting is a major step in the Barnacle SEO strategy. This will help you in securing a place in the existing higher-ranked non-directory websites. The focus here is to look for inbound organic traffic. Content, therefore, plays a major role in achieving this. If you guest post mind-blowing content on a high ranked website, you can get traffic for your content as well as give your content the audience it deserves. If you choose a site with a good reputation for guest blogging, they will be posting your details and will also put forth to readers where they can find you to keep reading your content.  

Source: HuffPost

That’s the idea behind barnacle SEO, helping each other grow is the motto. The initial stage of doing this is in bringing outreach. You will have to reach out to all the leading sites that align with your content, letting them know your interest in posting as a guest on their sites. You have to be careful about the quality of your content that you offer them because when you leverage their domain authority and your content is not potent enough,  it will not help in getting ranked. Your content will have to meet all the requirements of the readers to get deserving attention. So don’t take the readers for granted, do your research and fieldwork systematically to grab readers’ attention.         

4. Lookout For Sites Sharing Contents 

Why not try making a video or slide out of your content? You can find sites that would share your videos or slides ( Eg: Slideshare ). You can also make your existing blogs into an easy to share video or slide format, embed them to your content, and then share it with sites with a good reputation and authority that you will be guest posting on. The more your content appears on multiple websites, the greater will be the exposure you receive.

5. Content Syndication   

When any web-based content gets re-published or posted by any third-party site, this process is referred to as content syndication. All forms of digital content like blog posts, infographics, articles, videos, etc. can be syndicated. It works just like a barter system. The third-party website here gets the chance to avail free and relevant content and the one who creates those contents receives publicity, free exposure along backlinks to their website which will help them boost their organic traffic. By syndicating your content the efforts you spend and invest are also comparatively less as you are not required to reformat your content. 

6. Press Releases and Roundup Posts    

Press releases and roundups can help you in a way to expand the exposure and publicity of your brand. You can find plans selling press release services, syndicating them across various websites. It is because sending out a digital format press release is a borderline in link building. Syndicating them would give enormous exposure to your profile. Many businesses avail of this technique for building their digital space. Roundups are also very popular for their short format content that too by experts from respective industries. Another advantage is that these posts also get shared on social media. Find topics that relate to your business with satisfactory search volumes and then try building up your way to these posts.                 

You can take the extra mile in promoting your barnacles by keeping pace with all the above strategies. Make sure you link all the required blogs and posts from your website and vote them up in forums, share them on your social media, mentioning them in creatives along with responding and engaging in comments and posts. 

If you lack the right professional guidance to help you crack the SEO codes, our team of SEO Gurus will guide you through the right path.