Should you buy a backlink from a top-10 ranking listicle if the whole website is AI generated?
No, or it depends on the price. Because Google eventually detects low-quality AI-generated sites through user signals and deindexes them, the backlink's ranking benefit is temporary, so the preference is fewer links from quality websites.
An AI-generated site that pays for placement often dies in search over time once Google gathers enough signals from GA4 and Chrome browser data that the content is poor, so the link stops passing value. The strategy preferred is fewer backlinks from good websites rather than many from weak ones.
What did the Glenn Olop study find about writing listicles that rank your own brand as number one?
The study found that listicles are cited in roughly 48-50% of AI chat citations for 'best X' prompts, and that self-promotional listicles on your own website still work — ChatGPT and Perplexity cannot tell you are plugging yourself, so you get more mentions.
Olop ran different prompts like best software, best products, and best agencies, first measuring how often listicles are used as citations, then showing that even self-published listicles ranking your own brand number one get picked up by AI engines. This is compared to Google 10-15 years ago, when many low-quality websites also ranked, and it may change over time.
A separate case study by Mito Soh published listicles across many dropped domain names mentioning a new brand and found the brand started being cited by AI chats, showing AI chats currently lack Google's quality filters. How long this will last is unknown.
How long will the listicle self-plug tactic keep working in AI chats?
The expectation is that it will not be fixed next year, but possibly within the next two to five years, because AI chat companies have higher priorities than fixing publisher-side manipulation.
AI chat products still lack a Search Console equivalent and a separate communication channel for publishers, focusing only on end consumers, while also competing on model quality and monetization. Fixing result quality is therefore not the top priority. Lily Ray has separately predicted this behavior will stop working next year.
Do social media posts help you get cited in AI chats?
Mostly no — social posts are hard to index and deduplicate, so buying thousands of LinkedIn posts about your brand will not guarantee AI chat citations. Getting into 10 listicles that already rank in Google works far better.
AI chats and Google use little from social platforms except profile pages, which is why a heavily followed influencer platform with 100,000 LinkedIn followers still failed to rank in AI chats due to insufficient listicle mentions. Brand awareness campaigns only help indirectly, by triggering a wave of organic website mentions.
Why do Reddit threads rank so well, and how durable is that advantage?
Google appears to rank Reddit threads using engagement signals such as subreddit age, member activity, and trust signals, and Reddit reportedly shares internal ranking signals with Google. Reddit's anti-spam work also gives it more longevity than prior parasite plays, though its AI-chat citation rate has fluctuated.
Reddit traffic from Google grew roughly tenfold, and Reddit's own team reportedly argued its content quality was worth more in licensing deals with Google and OpenAI because years of anti-spam filtering resemble Google's own spam work. The exact mechanism for how Google chooses among threads is uncertain, and the possibility that Reddit shares internal ranking data is stated as an assumption.
What happened when Site Checker removed required sign-ups, and why does it matter for SEO?
Rankings improved only when the required sign-up was removed, even though backlinks were already plentiful — requiring registration increased bounce rates and pushed pages down for queries like 'SEO audit.' Giving something away free with no sign-up greatly improves the odds of ranking a tool page in the top 10.
Google tests user engagement signals within the top 10, so a page with many backlinks but poor engagement loses rankings. The same pattern surfaced in the Originality.ai story, where competitors offering a free tier of their AI detector took the number one position. A trade-off exists, because removing friction lowers conversion rates while increasing sessions, and brand-keyword traffic should still be directed to trial-focused pages.
Why do the guest's Medium articles rank without backlinks, and is 'parasite SEO' on Medium a real strategy?
Yes, it works — the guest's eight-year-old Medium profile ranks about 70-80% of its keyword-targeted articles in the top 10 without backlinks, including a Semrush-alternative article that hit the top 10 within a week. He rejects the 'parasite' label since he writes the content himself under his own name.
The results come from publishing heavily, interlinking the Medium articles, and occasionally building links from his other assets like his newsletter and Looker Studio templates site, treating Medium as a second website. Edward Sturm predicts this practice of building trusted properties on third-party platforms for occasional ranking pushes — which he calls 'parasite properties' — will be a major trend in 2026.
What distinguishes the best link building agencies from typical ones?
The best agencies pursue links on the specific top-10 ranking listicles or AI-cited pages you actually need, even when they lack existing contacts there, and they propose alternatives while being willing to wait. Most agencies instead push links on the inventory they already own.
Guest posting has declined in value because Google filters thin, fully AI-generated pages with a single outbound link, while link insertions into existing top-10 listicles help both rankings and AI visibility. Outreach emails from founders rather than agencies get better acceptance, and agencies sending email from their own unrelated domain names get filtered out by recipients.
What will SEO look like in 2026 according to the guest?
SEO becomes increasingly content marketing as AI chats grow, requiring expert-produced content around products, audiences, and use cases — such as transcribing demo calls — rather than copywriter or generic AI output. Link building also changes: backlinks need the right context around them so AI chats understand what the brand does and why it is better.
Because most SEO work done for Google also benefits AI chats, the bigger challenge is client communication: brands seeing the AI hype expect to appear in ChatGPT answers, and agencies must repackage standard SEO work in AI terms. Being present across the entire web, not just your own site, is the framing brands now need.
Youtube · Source-backed public analysis
Q&A: SEO Tactics for 2025: Parasite SEO, Reddit, and Medium
Every insight links to its original source.
Ivan Palii joins the show to share tested 2025 SEO tactics, including listicle self-plugs that fool AI chatbots, Medium parasite SEO, Reddit subreddit growth, link insertions, and predictions for SEO in 2026.
Related Articles
Selected from shared tags, topics, entities, and search keywords.
Related: Content Marketing · Artificial Intelligence · Digital Marketing
How to Improve AI Visibility in ChatGPT via Competitor Analysis
Competitors showing up in ChatGPT? That's your playbook. Learn how to find the sources AI trusts and get your brand cited too.
Read analysisRelated: Content Marketing · Search Engine Optimization · Ahrefs
Google Ranking Volatility Study: Is Position One Dead?
Joy Hawkins breaks down why there is no static number one on Google anymore after an 8.1 million-search volatility study.
Read analysisRelated: Digital Marketing · Search Engine Optimization · Content Marketing
How PageRank and Topical Authority Drive Google Rankings
26-year SEO veteran David Quaid on why PageRank still rules Google and the republish trick that fixed a crawled-not-indexed page.
Read analysisRelated: Search Engine Optimization · Artificial Intelligence · Content Marketing
How to Rank #1 on Google: 3-Step SEO Framework
Learn a three-step framework to rank number one on Google by decoding search intent, building topical authority, and earning backlinks and brand mentions.
Read analysis