AbstractRecently, Dasbach, Futer, Kalfagianni, Lin and Stoltzfus extended the notion of a Tait graph by associating a set of ribbon graphs (or, equivalently, cellularly embedded graphs) to a link diagram. Here we focus on Seifert graphs, which are the ribbon graphs of a knot or link diagram that arise from Seifert states. We provide a characterization of Seifert graphs in terms of Eulerian subgraphs. This characterization can be viewed as a refinement of the fact that Seifert graphs are bipartite. We go on to examine the family of ribbon graphs that arises by forming the parallels of a link diagram and determine how the genus of the ribbon graph of ar-fold parallel of a link diagram is related to that of the original link diagram.