"Adult SEO," ... "SEO for porn sites," ... "How to do adult search engine optimization??"
These are just a few of the search queries that thousands of Adult Webmaster hopefuls type into their favorite search engine every single day, hour, and minute—all over the world.
Everyone has their own way of approaching SEO, and everyone wants to know how the next guy did it (as in, “just how did HE achieve such a great ranking??”).
Today, we thought we’d do things differently. We’re sharing some real Adult SEO theories and strategies from an adult webmaster just like you.
This affiliate marketer has found great success in approaching his Adult SEO game in a very distinct way.
– This article was originally published at MonetizeAdultContent –
O hai, it's that Matt fella again!
In a niche where people may not naturally link to your sites, how is your adult site supposed to thrive in terms of SEO?
Onsite SEO is 100% Essential
First, let’s not forget that SEO is not just all link building. There is the whole onsite aspect that typically gets overlooked, and in an industry where links don’t occur as naturally or as frequently, it is completely mandatory that no onsite elements get overlooked. This means a good domain name, proper URL structure, good meta, targeted header text and the one thing that is greatly lacking on porn sites: Text!
Playboy could teach the porn industry a lot about SEO. Sometimes the articles do matter.
Today, much of the internet porn is either “user generated content” (UGC) or requires membership, thus not search-friendly. Because of this, there is quite often a lack of copy in the porn niche. It’s amazing what a little copy can do to a site’s ranking.
If it’s a gallery site, all image file names and meta information should be keyword rich and relevant to the gallery. This will not only help in the SERPs, but also in image search as well.
Think of the Long-tail Search Results
Sure, it’s everyone’s goal to rank for their actual keywords. If you’re going for something like “best porn”, don’t hold your breath. Always keep working for the keywords and try to bump those up in the rankings, but be aware of the long-tail search. This means changing up keywords fairly consistently. You ever notice how weird and funky some scene titles and descriptions can get? There’s a reason for that; to diversify and nail-down all the long tail search results, no matter how ridiculous they may seem.
People Google some WEIRD and obscure things when surfing porn. It would be a shame to let them slip through the cracks.
The other technique is to simply have a ton of content.
More content = more longtail search results. Remember to make it quality content though. The other advantage of having more content is it opens up the opportunity for more and longer surfing, as the visitor has more options for content.
Aside from being a ranking factor (Google is now looking at how visitors interact with a website) it can also lead to greater revenue. If your ads are paying out based on CPM, your revenue is completely driven by pageviews. More pageviews = more money.
PageRank Sculpting
There's a lot of speculation in the SEO field just how effective PageRank sculpting really is.
PageRank sculpting is designing one's website so that the PageRank flows to specific areas.
It's a hot issue among SEO-experts, with many experts arguing it doesn't work—but for this one affiliate marketer, he believes the concept to be valid and real. He argues it's only inefficient when people obsess over it following poor tactics. He recommends avoiding the usage of NoFollow links.
NoFollow is the equivalent of shooting yourself in the leg, he says.
PageRank still “evaporates” when flowing through a NoFollow, it’s just that the PR doesn’t pass on to the other page. Certain SEOs seem to believe that it’s possible to horde the PR on specific pages by NoFollowing all the outbound links on that page, which this adult webmaster doesn't believe.
This adult webmaster's advice? Don’t get obsessive about it, just be aware of it.
If there’s links going to worthless pages that don’t need to be there, eliminate them. Especially if it’s something that’s consistently found throughout the site, like footer or sidebar links. If you’re building a WordPress porn site, it might be a good idea to remove the author link for each post and be careful about tagging too lavishly, as it’ll spread link juice to the tag pages.
Tip: Adding a buffer page can greatly reduce the amount of outbound links on your site.
Think of it this way: Instead of letting the “link juice” evaporate from your site, you can essentially direct it to an entirely new page that can be optimized for conversions. By choosing what internal links are contained on those pages.
An example of a buffer like this can be found here: Building a page specifically for Facebook and Reddit traffic.
Link Wheels? Yea or Nay?
It’s been speculated in the SEO community that link wheels do not work. However, there are some people who feel they do work, when done correctly.
It’s been highly speculated that Google looks at the IP addresses of site files to determine if they’re all on the same host or not.
Those that feel that Google is practicing this also feel that Google is weighing backlinks from sites with identical IPs less than other backlinks. For this reason, it’s suggested that various hosting providers and packages be used to assemble the link wheel. This might mean additional hosting costs, but as long as the sites on the hosting plan can more than float the bill, it’s all gravy, right?
With link wheels, one theory is to kind of keep the links going one way as much as possible. Google looks at 1-way links as more valuable than reciprocal linking (both sites link to each other).
For that reason, a decent link wheel will have as many 1-way links as possible.
It also might be a strategy to keep the more hardcore content in the center of the wheel and reserve the outer section for the more softcore material. If you can pull off a completely non-nude site such as a bikini gallery or whatnot, it is possible to use that site for traditional link building and pass on the juice from the mainstream web to your adult link wheel.
Link wheels can sometimes bring profits!
Think about it; If your traffic is jumping from site to site, there's a greater chance of increased revenue with all the potential different ad spots. But the question is, how do you feel about link wheels?!
And finally, No Adult SEO strategy is complete without proper use of...
Google Analytics / Webmaster Tools
At this stage in the game, we're positive you know just how powerful Google's toolbox of tools remain.
Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools is invaluable for learning more about which keywords and search phrases to target. It gives valuable insight into what searches have the most volume and can even give you an idea of how many pages through the SERPs the surfers are crawling!
(Those horny visitors of yours will dig deep if they can’t find what they’re searching for…..)
And remember the talk of long-tails?
Pay attention to how people are searching compared to how you’re formatting titles, URL-structure and content.
Should you be changing, diversifying, and mixing things up to better match searches? Do you see some keywords and oddball search phrases that you’ve yet to target?
Knowing what your users want and how they’re searching can greatly help in further curation and all your onsite Adult SEO efforts.
That's how this webmaster achieved a great ranking in adult.
