There are millions of adult websites in the world. And more are getting added to the World Wide Web as you read this.
You may be a website owner or a model or a webmaster or anyone just thinking about tapping the adult space to increase your earnings.
This post will help you succeed as an online adult business.
We at AdultSEO.org have made it our business to thrive in this space and make a lot of money for our clients. The adult space has its own rules and dynamics which we’ve managed to master quite well.
Today we are going to share a few of our successful tricks with you so that you can implement it in your business and raise it to the level where you make loads of money from your adult website.
Well, this post is going to be quite detailed and filled with information; and there is a chance that you might not be able to grasp all the information at once.
It took us a while and a lot of brainstorming with our whole team to create it too! The way to use the nifty information on this post would be to keep coming back to it again and again, try the techniques, and give us feedback. In this way, we can improve the quality of the post and learn something new too!
So how do you as an online adult business stay ahead?
The answer is SEO; and yes it is the magic bullet that will energize your website and cause your earnings to explode. Almost all of you know this and this is the main reason why you are reading this post.
There is a great significance of SEO in the online adult space. This is because all of us in the adult sector wish to make lots of money from our online presence.
But only very few of us are able to make money selling adult content online. As there is not much difference in the content that we provide to our consumers and that being provided by other adult businesses; SEO allows us to differentiate ourselves from others by becoming more accessible to the end users.
Spoon feeding does not work here, period!
One very important aspect of SEO for adult online businesses which you should realize before we delve down into the details of successful techniques is that you will have to adapt them to your business or niche. While it is a much used and abused cliché, thinking out of the box is of paramount importance is you are to succeed in the online adult business!
For example, through your excellent SEO skills, your site reaches rank 1 on the keyword that you have targeted through in-depth research. However, then you decide to rest on your laurels. In a matter of days, you will find that your competitors have surged ahead and left you behind in their wake! So it is not only a matter of instant success but lasting domination that will enable you to make money in the cutthroat world of online adult websites.
Now, something on the benefits that SEO can bring to your business.
Well, SEO’s main point is that it increases traffic on your website. But it does not end there.
Effective SEO brings users who have the potential to become paying customers to your adult website. It also helps you retain them!
What point would it make that if a person with a wish to purchasing blow-dryers landed on your site? She would exit in a jiffy! So, targeting is a very important part of SEO which you will get to know in the sections that follow below, especially in keyword research.
We come to another question that will be most certainly on your minds.
Does in-house SEO work or should you outsource it to an SEO expert who has an excellent track record in the sector?
Well, SEO is not rocket science
But, it is not the easiest thing in the world either. It all depends on your interest and willingness to invest time and learn. Proficiency in SEO requires creativity, knowing your niche, and finding your own solutions. So if you are a creative person who can innovate and learn fast, then you can give it a try.
This decision also depends upon what kind of budget do you have;
If you are on a low budget, then it definitely makes sense to read up, learn, practice and try to do adult SEO yourself. On a low budget, SEO solutions that you buy will generally not prove to be effective. There are a lot of fly-by-night operators in this segment; who will offer you great results at unbelievable prices. Once you make the payments, they will keep fooling you for months together. After a period of time and a lot of money down the drain, you will realize that all this was nothing but a scam. So, it is better to make a decent amount of investment in SEO and get it done from an adult SEO solutions provider such as AdultSEO.org, if you want to get the desired results.
Remember, if you spend peanuts, peanuts are what you will get in return!
For a person with a larger budget, a lot of factors come into play. The answers to these following questions will tell you whether to hire an outside firm or do it yourself or hire your own team:
What do you want to invest time in? Do you want to focus on content and other parts of the business or do you want to focus your energies on online marketing?
Do you think that you have the right skill set to learn and excel in SEO and digital marketing?
How big is the amount that you can invest- Anything greater than $1000 a month and we can make SEO work for you!
SEO Parameters: According to us, there needs to be some introduction to the lay user on the parameters is SEO based on. And that makes us come to the basic mechanics of the search engine and how do we enable Google to rank us at the top in its rankings?
Brian Dean, an SEO guru who runs the hugely popular blog Backlinko, and who we are going to repeatedly cite in the post below, has done an exhaustive post on the 200 factors identified by him which are used by Google to rank search results.
So, your SEO efforts need to keep in mind these factors and how your website can feature positively on the most important of these factors.
According to us, some of the more important factors can be clubbed under various categories such as authority, relevance, and quality of inbound/ outbound links to the website. Let us discuss each one for a bit as these contain concepts that we will keep getting back to in the course of this post.
Domain Authority: Moz deserves the credit for coming up with the metric and using the MozBar plugin will allow you to measure any website or post on this parameter. Let us now come to what domain authority is all about.
Domain authority is a metric used to define the reliability of the domain as measured by Google. A variety of factors affect the authority of the domain which includes the number and more importantly the quality of unique links which point to the site, social metrics, etc.
The relevance of the page or the domain refers to the relevance of the content on your page or domain with the keyword that you are targeting- we will go into a bit of detail on this topic, in our section on Keyword Research and Content.
Quality and Authority of Inbound and Outbound Links– This metric brings under it a variety of sub-factors which basically measure the domain authority and relevance of the links pointing to your adult website. There is also added value given to unique links from other websites to your own. We will deal with this in detail in our Link Building section.
And winning the war on all these factors is what SEO is all about.
Here, find a short Table of Contents for your easy reference:
KeyWord Analysis- Website Structure
- Website Content
- Link Building and Backlinks
- Extra Tips
Keyword: Competitor Research– Your competitors, especially the ones doing well would have definitely made a lot of effort in getting to their current position. It would be a shame if you do not utilize their efforts and let it all go to waste! So, this is how you go about utilizing the information that your competitors have left on the table for you to take advantage!
IDENTIFICATION OF THE KEYWORDS IN THE ADULT VERTICAL
First, make a list of your top-most competitors. Spend a bit of quality time
SEMRUSH
A highly useful tool which comes as premium tool and is good enough to understand the competition.
We tell you how to use it:
When you enter a domain name or the URL, you get all the details with respect to keywords, content gap etc. Not only that, when you analyze, you also get to understand on which keywords, the competitor’s URL dominate.
AHREFS and MOZBAR
Like SEMRUSH tools such as
FLIPPA
Using a site such as Flippa can also be a goldmine of information to you.
It is basically a marketplace for online businesses- owners give you a lot of information about how they set up their websites and the works. With a bit of digging you will find case studies related to your segment and lessons that you can draw from their failures.
Don’t want to pay for these premium services of Semrush, Ahrefs and Mozbar?
No need to worry!
Avail the free but limited alternatives like keyword.io or go for Google’s keyword tool (GoogleAd users simply vouch for the usefulness of the tool) which does not create a hole in your pocket.
After, you have digested this comprehensive guide on keyword research, I am sure that you would now have a decent idea of what to do.
Adult-specific research
Coming to the adult sphere, once again it comes back to you and the kind of adult content that you publish. For example, does your site specialize in Gangbangs? Then it does not take a lot of imagination to off-the-cuff find out related keywords such as Gangbang- videos, tubes, girls, etc. etc.
Long tail keywords
So you have done your research. And you have identified the keywords that you need to rank well on. But the competition is huge. And this like any tough endeavor will take time.
So do you keep waiting till you get the rank 1 on the target keyword that you so desire?
Well, you need to branch out. Long Tail keywords are those that might not have come up in your research but they will certainly come from imaginative thinking.
For example, focusing on the keyword Asian Teen simply means getting overwhelmed by the competition and spending huge chunk of money on the PPC campaigns. Instead trying long tail keywords like Smoking hot Asian Filipino teen would have lesser competition and more importantly they are directly related to your content.
This would improve your site’s authority and make it more reliable in Google’s eyes for the really valuable keywords where the competition is going to be cut-throat.
LSI Keywords
LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing.
In simple English, these keywords are basically synonyms of your target keyword. The keyword bunch that you obtain from the techniques mentioned above (apart from the target keyword) should be sprinkled liberally in your content so that Google identifies it as an adult website.
It also will help you rank on keywords which are related to your area of specialization! If these keywords are present in your content, they also help Google get an idea of what actually the content is about.
You can use tools such as
WEBSITE STRUCTURE
As the old adage goes Audience decides the Content, likewise building a well structured Adult SEO site is imperative for sustainable online business.
Website design and optimization is the area where your primary focus should be. These are low-hanging fruits and should be the most relevant area for you to work on if you are going to manage your SEO in-house.
Simple, functional, and easy on the eye is the way to go for you!
1. SELECT A SIMPLE AND EASY TO REMEMBER DOMAIN NAME:
Choosing a simple domain name will help you attract the type –in –traffic.
The advantage with short and memorable domain names is that it helps traffic to simply land on your website by “typing-in” your URL. The brand power of your domain name translates into improved Google rankings for you! .
Incorporating your focus keyword at the root or your URL is the best possible practice
Tip: Always remember that you don’t add too many keywords that are separated by the hyphen.
Ensure that your domain name is simple and unforgettable.
Dynamics of a Good Domain Name?
Having zeroed upon a good domain name and what if the particular domain name is not available?
No need to get disheartened!
The secret is to keep exploring until you find the desired domain name for your online website.
You should be aware that there are plenty of available adult domains on the market and let’s see how you can make them yours.
Our advice would be to buy an expired domain name with an existing backlinks! On websites like Namejet and Domcop but be 100% sure about the quality of the backlinks to avoid Google penalties!
Ensure Website Security Using HTTPS
Confused as to why you should go for HTTPS?
Well the answer lies in the rankings on the Google search engines!
Refer to the below info graphic to better understand the reason why HTTPS trumps HTTP?
For further details please refer the Google’s official guidelines on how to secure your site with HTTPS.
Speed – One very important aspect that matters for nearly all your users is speed.
If your website cannot load fast enough, then you are gone!
This is all the more important for adult web sites and tubes.
So, invest in servers and backend infrastructure. If you cut costs on this aspect, there is very little chance for your website to succeed.
Use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix and Pingdom Tools to find out where you stand on this parameter.
A trick to not lose on this parameter would be to analyze your traffic and optimize your infrastructure to the country from which majority of your viewers are from. For example, if you find that Germans are the kinky patrons of your website; then it definitely makes sense to host your website there!
Landing Pages– Landing pages are a great way to structure your content around. They allow you to optimize your lead generation and marketing in such a way that actually convert into sales.
Basically, every important sub-division or part of your website should have its own specific landing page so that the specific demands of users using specific sections of your website can be catered to!
The landing page must be such that there must be only information on it that is useful to the user, and it must have a prominent indicator/ button for users to either their details with you. Also, minimize navigation options on this page as you want your user to stay here!
The more the number of landing pages that you have, the more is the chance of converting traffic into leads!
This research from ‘Hubspot’ clearly illustrates the importance of landing pages for businesses. Also, notice the landing page Hubspot has created for you to share details in order to gather your details; before they allow you to access their research content!
Remove Clutter– Another important part of website optimization from a user point of view is having an uncluttered clean website which looks attractive to the eye. This will reduce your bounce rate and help in retaining the visitors who have arrived on your website.
‘Bounce rate’ can be defined as the percentage of visitors of who immediately leave the website on arriving there. Google keeps a track of this and the reliability and authority of your website goes up if the bounce rate remains low. So, a great user interface also influences your rank on Google.
ROBOTS.TXT FILE
Robots.txt– One of the easier ways to make your website SEO-friendly. The robots.txt is a file which tells Google which parts of your site are go-to areas and which are the parts it should not crawl at all.
This, as Neil Patel explains in wondrous detail in his post here is one trick that anyone and everyone must use. The above post explains in detail how to setup a robots.txt file, and how you can test it using Google’s Webmaster Tools.
The advantage of these above-mentioned methods is that you are making it easy for the search engine to present your site in its results by giving it clear instructions. This will have a direct impact on visibility of your website on Google Rankings.
After you have done all of this, ensure that you test your site using this; Google will tell you what it thinks of the various optimizations that you have performed on your website.
For further exploring the details, please refer
SITE MAP Submission for Optimal Bots Navigation:
A sitemap acts like a blueprint of your website and helps search engines like Google find, crawl and index all of your website’s content. Sitemaps also acts as a guide for the search engines in respect to which pages on your site are the most important.
Click here to access Google official guidelines on how to build and submit a site map
Mobile Optimization: Ensure That Your Website Is Fully Optimized for Mobile
Another no brainer! With more than half of the global internet population accessing the internet through their mobile; not being a part of the mobile game is like sounding the death knell for your online business. This holds true for the adult industry and can be easily checked by you using Google’s statistics for your website.
On this aspect, it is best to hear directly from the horse’s mouth. So, first of all refer to Google’s Webmasters Mobile Guide and they also have a nifty test which gives an instant evaluation of the mobile-friendliness of your adult website!
The importance of this step cannot be emphasized enough as a bad user experience on mobile will drive away your users faster than you can ever draw them in!
Another important tool is Google Mobile First Index that will identify why your website is getting outranked by the competitor’s website.
How to avoid getting outranked by Competitor’s website?
Ensure that the efficiency of your mobile version is nowhere less than the efficiency of your desktop version.
Refer the mobile first approach to tackle the mobile optimization
What if your mobile website is already built?
Please refer to the article describing how to be responsive.
Google Search Console’s Mobile-Friendly Test is another extremely useful tool that helps in identifying and eliminating the Mobile Errors.
Ever heard of the tool Proranktracker for evaluating your Mobile Optimization
This tool is like a magic potion which generates the most comprehensive and in depth reports revealing your mobile ranking on search engines.
Happily Surprised!!!?
WEBSITE CONTENT
Good SEO begins with good content
There is no escape from and no shortcut for providing good content.
Even the most powerful SEO techniques can get you only a short term boost in rankings. For a long term innings in the adult business, creating engaging, structured and coherent content that your users love is the only way forward.
The first step in this long journey begins with research on what kind of content do you want on your website?
Having focus keyword(s) in your domain name (is a near perfect situation), the goal should be to focus on other keywords of other URL of the web.
Ensure the inclusion of the relevant keywords in the slugs of your posts and pages.
Confused as to what do we mean by the Slugs?
We can define Slug as the readable part(s) of your URL after your domain. It can also be described as the path or the identifier used to reach a certain page. Let’s understand the concept of the Slug with the help of an example. Take the URL of the Adult SEO guide you’re currently reading as an example: https://www.adultseo.org/blog/adult-seo-guide/
As we see in this case, “adult-seo-guide” would be the Slug of this post.
Avoiding the Stop words in the page slug is another favoured practice.
Longer the Content better the rank
One example of this is this post right here! Google loves it and so do your users (provided the content is useful!). Also, reading long, detailed and engaging content leaves your users in a state of admiration; and they’re more likely to share your content and spread the word if you manage to get them into that state of mind!
Structure this long content properly, so you do not get lost while creating it and the user does not get lost while reading it! Use sub-headings, text bars, etc. which ensures that the structure is maintained.
Use eye catching headlines– half the battle is won or lost here!
Use keywords sparingly in a way that makes sense. When you bombard your content and your viewer with keywords, neither does it make sense and Google now doles out generous penalties for the same!
At the same time, ensure that your keyword is in the URL, title tag, and first paragraph of whatever content you are producing
Be unique- use your crazy oddball ideas! After all this is the adult industry we are talking about!
Formulate a definite structure and stick to it. Human beings like symmetry- something which has a definite beginning, a body, and an end- and this rule applies to your content too!
Give prominence to your keywords– if you do not give them importance, then who will!?
Use images, banners and whatever visual content your creativity can come up with- This is especially important with adult content. Strategically placed content can skyrocket your user engagement and with it your website’s rank!
Keep updating your content– It gives both the user as well Google the right signals about the website!
Here’s a case study on finding the best keywords to focus on according to your type of adult content.
Organize the Hierarchy of your pages to optimize Relevancy.
A structured hierarchy of your pages makes it convenient for search bots to crawl your website and make sense out of it.
Use Categories and Tags to Sort Your Content
No matter how attractive your site is with respect to the content, all can go haywire if the content is not properly sorted and presented.
This is the reason why tags and categories and tags are two really powerful tools that you shouldn’t overlook.
So, don’t get left behind:
➝ Sort your content by using Categories and Tags strategically.
- Refer the article link to better understand the Categories and
Tags importance for organizing the content. https://yoast.com/taxonomy-seo-categories-tags/
Ideally, you want each piece of content to ideally fall into only one category.
However, the possibility of linking the same piece of content to multiple tags should be kept in mind.
Seems complicated? It’s not.
The truth is that sorting your content with categories and tags is actually much easier than you think.
Let’s look at a practical example with adult SEO in mind where categories and tag help to sort out the content a tube site?
Firstly you could sort out the videos with larger categories like that:
- Gay
- BBW
- Amateur
- Hentai
- MILF
- Ebony
- Etc…
After that you could use tags to describe the micro content featured in the videos as an overlay of information like that:
- Gang bang
- Blowjob
- Big dick
- Big boobs
- Hardcore
- Etc…
This is just an illustrative example. There are many ways in which you could navigate and come up with your own strategy for organizing content structure.
Utilize HTML headings in a structured way
Search engines consider 6 levels of headings: H1 heading is the most important and H6 is the least important in the hierarchy.
As per Google, Hn tags are used by web spiders to comprehend the structure of the text and—consequently—its subject.
Following points should be kept in mind while structuring the HTML headings.
- H1 title should feature on each page only once.
- Your focus should be to include the keywords in the H1 title.
- Maintain Hierarchy levels.
Structuring HTML headings is pretty easy and adds SEO value to your website.
Broken Links!
Broken links on your website? Be prepared for the irrelevancy.
➝ Continuously monitoring your website is the only way to ensure that broken links are either removed or upgraded according to their new link path.
Relevance of 404 page for Adult SEO
Well, a proper 404 page improves the chances of your users staying on your website and – consequently – sends a favourable signal to search engines
It is an understood fact that it is impossible to run a website without broken links at some point in time.
It is bound to happen this way.
Luckily, you can get ready for this scenario:
➝ Create a proper 404 page having
Link Building: Internal and External Links
With the excellent content already generated by you, it is essential to focus on Link building! Depending upon their location, they are called internal and external links.
Internal Links: An internal link is any link from one page on your website to another page on your website.
Refer
https://moz.com/learn/seo/internal-link
Internal Links’ utility in the adult SEO can be understood from the fact that these are used to highlight your most important pages.
Connecting different content helps search engines comprehend your website’s structure and – consequently – give more weight to your most relevant pages.
In layman’s terms, we define External Links as the hyperlinks point at (target) any domain other than the domain the link exists on (source)
Troubled how the links sends away visitors away from your website?
Search engines downgrades websites with too many internal links.
Incorporating an external link connects your website content to other similar or complementary relevant content helps search engines like Google better understand what your website is about.
Remember: Only add relevant external links to your site and focus on quality and not on quantity.
Why?
Too many external links would dilute the Link Juice of each link
The more links you have on a page, the less link juice each of them will receive.
Usually, SEO experts illustrate how link juice works on a website as such:
See? Each Outbound link receives only a part of the SEO juice provided by the website. Extra Tips:
Title Tags, Meta Descriptions and Sub headings
Title Tags
Consider the title tags to be the content headings; and there should be only one. This is a very easy part of optimization and yet a lot of people get this wrong.
Get your keyword in the title tag but ensure that it occurs in a natural way. It is an excellent idea to ensure that your title tag is populated with some LSI keywords, or some long tail keywords that popped up in the course of your research. Such an approach ensures that you not only are in contest for the target keyword but also are in the game for peripheral contests too; from where good monetization opportunities can also flow in.
For example: ‘Asian Bunnies: Lesbian, Straight, Milf, Hardcore’ is a good title tag if your adult website features content on Asian Girls but ‘Hot Asian- Lesbian Asian. Straight Asian’ is a poor H1 tag.
I think the above example illustrates the importance of a natural yet keyword filled H1 tag; which also incorporates other keyword combinations to ensure that you put up a good showing on all kinds of related keywords!
Try and put your keyword in the front part of the title; even if it is possible then it’s not a huge issue.
Customized Meta Content Attracts more Traffic:
Meta Content basically refers to the text that appears when your website appears in a Google Search result. This is basically a 100-200 word opportunity for you to grab the attention of the users!
Key Rules!
There are some short and simple rules for good meta-descriptions.
Average Title Length: 55 characters.
Average description: 165 characters.
Including your target keywords is a no-brainer; and also ensuring that the sentence makes sense.
During competitor analysis for our various customers, we have observed too many meta-descriptions vanishing into thin air; and that shows a business which has not done its SEO homework properly.
How you can improve your Organic Traffic by incorporating minor changes to Your Images’ Names and Alt Text
Images are a very good way to rank the specific keywords.
This section is an illustrative example of the Google “images”:
Improved ranking in the images section can in reality increase your organic traffic in the range of 10-20%
We feel that it is a reason good enough to optimize your images for SEO purpose
➝ Use descriptive names and add alternate text on your links to add SEO value to them.
Another convenient way to power up your SEO preparedness is using Alt-Text tagging on your images.
As an adult website, images are probably being utilized here, there, and everywhere! This simple trick will give another indexing insight to search engines like Google when it starts searching on the targeted keyword.
This activity will allow the links to be crawled by search bots.
Relevant descriptive keywords should be incorporated on the Image file name and the Alternate text of your image tag.
If you are in need of inspiration, never hesitate to browse the competition to analyze how they are using categories and tags efficiently.
Extra tip!
When done in the right way, the categories and tag pages can conveniently become an excellent target for internal links.
Internal links can rank for those targeted keywords if your content is relevant enough and your website is optimized for SEO.
Canonical Tags on the Duplicate Content to Boost Your Rank ability
Duplicate content can be a big issue for your website; if you continue to ignore it. It can hamper your SEO efforts big time; as it can confuse Google and drain valuable link juice from your site.
This is where the above-mentioned methods come into work.
One of the best methods to avoid the bane of duplicate content is to set up 301 redirects from the page having duplicate content to the page that you want to rank.
This gives Google the signal as to which page it should rank and which to ignore. It also ensures that your site gives a much higher relevancy signal to Google; instead of two or three pages having similar content.
The rel=canonical attribute is also another effective way for you to tell Google to ignore a page and redirect it to the page that you want to be featured on its search rankings. Moz has a really interesting infographic which explains this concept quite clearly:
PRIORITIZING YOUR BACKLINK STRATEGY TO ATTRACT DIRECT AND ORGANIC TRAFFIC!
Some of the important factors to be kept in mind while doing the link building
Always favor the Quality of the Backlinks and don’t run after quantity.
How do you assess the Quality of the Backlinks?
Analyze the Domain Authority and Spam Score of the website and based upon the score target qualified links.
Use Relevant Keywords as Anchor Text for Your Backlinks
Not only the backlinks themselves, but also the quality of the back link anchor text is of utmost importance.
Backlink anchor text is the anchor text used by other websites linking to your website. The anchor text of these back links helps search engines like Google to rank a web page for the most relevant keywords.
No-follow and Do-follow links– You would have heard a lot about these concepts and a lot of people would have stressed on the importance of only ‘Do-follow’ links.
A ‘no-follow’ tag tells a search engine not to take the link as an approval of the linked site’s content. This is mostly used when someone is compiling a list, and just provides a mention of your site.
While, there is a lot of merit in trying to build do-follow links from quality websites, which endorse the content of your site or web page, no-follow links also play a role.
Remember the old media buzzword, ‘Any publicity is good publicity’– well this holds true for no-follow links as well! Even if some sites are sending some no-follow links your way, what is important to keep in mind is that these links have an impact on the trust that Google has on your site.
A site with only ‘do-follow’ links makes Google most suspicious and might lead to a Penalty.
Link building is also a process that never has a conclusion or an end. As you go on creating and updating your content, you would also need to go on updating your efforts in order to promote this content.
So how do you get ready to win the link building war?
First, you need to get prepared internally. A properly internally-linked website is an essential prerequisite for you to start with an effective link building effort. This can give a significant head start to your adult online business; before you enter into the game of building or buying links.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty’s of link building some details that will help you understand link building in a much better way.
Two terms which are quite important for understanding Link Building are Co-citation and Co-occurrence. For more details, please visit Shaun Barker’s first-rate page on off-page SEO Factors
Co-citation, as the name suggests is when your site is quoted by more than one source. This basically shows how valuable a source of content is your website; and what is it worth in the eyes of others. The more you rank on this parameter, the higher is the worth of your site in the eyes of Google.
Co-occurrence is the relevance-based quotient that Google keeps in mind. It is basically frequency of occurrence of keywords in your content which have comparable counterparts in the websites that are related to your site. Both these are crucial parameters which Google considers to rank your website among thousands of competitors in the online world.
Black Hat SEO
Now in our introduction to adult SEO, let us dwell on a hot yet controversial topic among adult marketers. This is regarding Black Hat SEO techniques. These techniques basically refer to what was done by SEO companies for a long time and used to be a fundamental part of SEO. What we are referring to here is the strategy of buying thousands of links and using these to increase your website’s’ rankings.
Whether to employ this method or not?
The adult business has its shady bits, as not everything here is lawful and everyone here is willing to game the system a bit.
So Black Hat SEO is considered legitimate by many in our sphere. And if it achieves results, then we don’t think that there is any issue in that.
One piece of advice for all those venturing into black hat SEO techniques; do it through an experienced agency. Do not think of doing it alone as it is like riding a tiger.
You will not know when to get out! The agency guys have a bit more experience in this field; and they might have gotten away with it as all of us have at some point of time.
Some of the techniques involved in Black Hat SEO are link building wheels; and use of money to get thousands of backlinks to your site. These might still enable you to get that temporary increase in your rankings. If you are out to make a quick buck then something such as a Private Blog Network (PBN) might also be of interest to you.
But, but, but;
Google has gotten smarter over the years and many updates and a lot of head scratching later, Black Hat SEO techniques now are not worth your time and money.
Google is quick to catch these and it is hard to recover your website after a Google Penalty, as many of the veterans reading this would know!
We have had some clients suffer from debilitating penalties and when we investigated the reason; we found out that they had indulged in link farming and buying of links from some shady websites; without our knowledge.
This is a risk that you as a client should take with full knowledge of how destructive it can be to your very existence as an online business!
You need to take any SEO solutions provider who promises you quick results with a pinch of salt.
As per our near decade-long experience in this sector, such an approach will never lead to a long term benefit. With Google getting smarter, such a strategy can immediately backfire.
So, it comes down to your choice! There will be not much mention any of these black hat techniques in the rest of the post below; as we do not subscribe to something which has the potential to destroy your business.
Penalties: You will also find references to one term repeatedly in this post. The term I’m referring to is Google Penalty. It is very important to have a basic idea of what this is and then you would understand why I’m repeatedly warning you against Black Hat techniques that inevitably earn you a penalty. These penalties mainly include:
Algorithmic penalty from Google Penguin– This is a penalty built into the Google Search Engine since the Penguin update. This is applied to sites using backlinks that appear like spam to the Google algorithm. The only sure-shot way to avoid is to not use Black Hat techniques at all, and have only proper and unique backlinks to your site.
Penalty from a Google administrator– If this happens, it means someone at Google’s Search team has spotted some abnormal links on your website or linking to your site. They will communicate the details about the penalty to you via Google Console. Again you can avoid this by keeping a squeaky clean link profile
However
ADULT FORUMS/ DIRECTORIES:
Adult directories/ forums: Commenting on blogs and forums does not have the effect that it used to have, say five years ago; but it still allows you a way to create backlinks.
Use this method sparingly and for god’s sake do not use anchor text and waste your precious keywords by this method. This indiscriminate use of anchor text can earn you a Google Penalty for all your efforts.
Let me elaborate a bit further. The process of keyword research involves you spending valuable time and money on researching keywords.
You get what you think is a list of high-powered keywords on which you need to rank well. Now do not directly create a link from these keywords to your site. Google has started penalizing such practices, and that is why this method of building links should be used carefully. So, it is also important to vary your anchor texts. If your keyword research is exhaustive, then you can easily bring in variations in anchor text and avoid Google Penalties!
The ways to properly using forums and directories can be many. One of the best ways is to try and identify posts or threads which are related to the content that you have shared on your adult website. Then, focus on these threads and interact with the users on these threads, share links with these users and ask for their valuable feedback. This will add a great deal to the relevancy of your adult domain or page. This will also give the ‘social’ push that your website so badly needs.
However, as I said before that this is a highly misused way to build links and you should take due care that you do not end up with thousands of spammy back links from shady forums. This will lead to a Google Penalty, sooner rather than later; and your site will bear a heavy loss and it will take a long time, if ever for you to recover!
This is another reason for you to not get into the game of paying for links. The hundreds or thousands of links that you will get will add not much value. The reason we are repeatedly cautioning against reliance on these moves is that we have realized that SEO for a lot of people in the adult field is just link buying and hoping for the best. Well, you can try again but this method does not give any result, trust us!
Blogging– Guest blogging is another way of adding to your link juice. But Google does not like this method of adding backlinks to your website that much anymore (see what Matt Cutts has to say!).
So make sure that you blog on some website related to your niche; and there is a much higher chance of Google considering it useful. However, again you should not waste too much time on this as this is one of the more used methods and has been done to the death by many in the adult space.
Spammy or badly written blogs on some low-traffic and low authority websites can once again make you the recipient of a Google Penalty. However, if you can wheedle your way to a guest blog on some high-volume site or forum, then you are in business!
Another good idea would be to blog on your own adult website, as it is a good way to engage with your viewers and create high quality content to drive traffic.
Any type of good quality and original content that you add to your website or online business is always going to help you. Blogging is a sure-shot way to drive user interaction and getting to know what they actually want. So, it would be highly beneficial to you to start blogging if you have not already!
Sharing Infographics or Animated Content– It is commonly known that your users respond much better to visual content than just text. So you should leverage this to add to the popularity of your site. This method also reduces the ‘bounce rate’ and keeps users on your adult website.
Adult affiliate marketing– One way of making money and adding to the traffic of your adult web business is affiliate marketing. You can join an adult affiliate such as crakrevenue and an adult ad website such as adultising.com to promote adult offerings of other players through your website; and earn some easy money through it.
The advantage that such a ploy would give to your SEO efforts is that would act as an extra ingredient to the link juice that your site generates by creating more inbound and outbound links from your website.
Also, these sites rank high on the relevancy indicator for adult keywords and by linking to them you basically are telling Google that your site has the authority and relevancy to succeed in the adult market.
The sites that you can promote include online adult dating sites, game sites
Descriptive explanations on YouTube and adult tube sites– This is another under-used method to add some keyword juice to your adult website. Add a descriptive explanation to your videos and make sure that it is filled with the keywords identified using your research including LSI keywords and long tailed keywords. This will guarantee that Google identifies it as feature rich content and gives it the importance that it deserves! These explanations provide more ammo to Google in ranking your site. And this is a sure shot way for you to become more relevant to your users and also to Google!
Adult Tubes- a Revenue Source– Well, there are some adult tube websites such as Chaturbate and iFriends where you can upload a lot of your adult videos to drive traffic to your website. You have an additional option to create tube videos for these sites and put them on sale on some of these sites. This opens up an additional revenue funnel for your adult content.
Through these sites and others, you can even create customized paid content for your viewers, which would drive traffic even more to your website as such content will invariably be shared by them. This will also prove to be an added revenue source for your adult web business. Some of the specialized sites in this segment include Customs4U and Extra Lunch Money.
While this method is not a direct SEO method, it will indirectly lead to better search ranking for your adult website. As we have told you earlier, this is an innovative niche and you have to think out of the box to succeed and make money here!
Email Marketing– This is one of the under-used methods to build links and organically grow traffic and build user engagement. This also has the potential to provide you with a solid base of backlinks.
The first thing to do is to build a list of email ID’s of your subscribers and regular visitors. It would be best if these are shared by your users themselves. Thus, then the question of unsolicited emails which invariably end in the Trash folder does not arise.
Your email communications must add value to your users, and then only will they click on whatever you send them. So think twice before sending them any spam on their email!
Here, in the adult space, trust is missing between the users and adult websites. If you are able to provide them quality content and assure them of not tampering with their data, your users are likely to take a positive view of your website; and also become promoters of your adult website in their own right.
We would recommend some tricks in email marketing to make it more powerful such as timing the mails in such a manner that the customer is more likely to access it and not dump it into the Trash folder! Time your emails in such a way that they reach your customers when they have some spare time such as late afternoon and evening. This can be especially beneficial for adult content; as your customers are more likely to use and appreciate your content in their leisure time.
Go Social!
Social media has been the in-thing among internet marketers for at least the past 10 years. For adult online businesses, it is a slightly more difficult issue. The problem at hand is how to effectively leverage social media to drive traffic; and that too when users hesitate to share things related to adult content on social media. The adult space is a private affair for most users; and cracking the social media puzzle is something only a few adult marketers have been able to achieve.
Socially-linked adult website– One of the most important things to do is to add the social button on your website which allows users to share your content on popular social media sites. And do not keep it at only one point only. Allow the user the option to share your content on every part of the page!
Social Media profiles– The second thing to do is to create your social media profile on Twitter, Tumblr, etc. and start posting content. Avoid sharing adult content on Facebook as your content may be banned there.
Use a lot of humor or even satire in your posts, as this gives you more of a chance to come into notice of the various users of these social media sites. Keep posting regularly as this shows that your handle is active, and share a lot of video content, infographics, etc.
Regular interaction– Another very important thing is to communicate and interact on various tweets and post relating to adult content with other users. This can be a goldmine for you as it is free and can gain you a foothold with users that no adult forum or site can give. Your active social media presence also provides a reference to your end users that this is a reliable adult content provider.
Influencer research: Also, search for influencers in the adult space such as popular pornstars, handles of big porn websites, magazine owners, etc. and look at the people following them and interacting with their tweets. It will give you an idea of the people who are actually interested in this content and might be interested in yours too! Then follow such people and as is the case with social media, some of them will follow back. This will take a lot of time but is one of the better tools to build organic interaction and traffic to your content.
Campaigns: You can also run social media marketing campaigns to share particular parts of your content and to increase the popularity of your website. Again your interaction and becoming successful on social media depends on both your creativity as well as your interest, we can share 10,000 case studies on how to effectively use social media, but in the adult
Author profile on Google:
Another must-do to as part of your outreach to increase your social media presence is to create an ‘Author’ profile in Google. This will link to your Google page against whatever content that you would have authored. This is one of the ways to build the ‘trust’ quotient of your website. And in the future, it is possible that this will be an important consideration for Google to rank your website.
Well, we hope that you have learnt something useful from this guide, and have had as much fun in reading it as we have had in compiling it.
If all this seems a bit too complicated for you, then we at AdultSEO.org are more than willing to help you out! We’d be highly obliged if you would share this as widely as possible, and leave your feedback in the comments section below.
