I was wondering if anyone here can refer me to a professional SEO expert, preferably someone who specializes in the adult website industry.
I noticed a blog post I wrote a few years ago about a particular gay pornstar is not showing up in any Google results, even when I use the pornstars name, my website name and the name of the article. When using that specific search criteria three pages of results show up in Google and my article is not among any of them. It does not look like Google has blacklisted my site so it seems very odd that the article didn’t show up in search.
I’m scratching my head about this so I’m seriously considering paying an SEO expert to see if they can explain what’s going on. If this is happening with one of my blog posts I shudder to think how many others I’ve written that are invisible in Google.
Ideally I’d love to get help from Google, but that seems unlikely so hopefully there is an adult website SEO expert out there who can help.
Before hiring an expensive professional (and often end up with disappointing results), you should know that - by default - Google won’t just index every single post or page, just because they simply exist.
Google does crawl your pages, but usually won’t list 100% of those pages. Google has developed pretty intelligent algorithms, which are capable of making decisions about whether or not a page should be included in their index. There are numerous reasons for not indexing one or more of your pages, such as;
Your page returned a HTTP error at the time of crawling your pages
You may have used a “noindex” tag (perhaps by accident)
Your page is very similar to another page of yours (duplicate content)
Your page is very similar to pages on other sites (external duplicate content)
Problems with pagespeed or mobile friendliness (now or in the past) could both be reasons for Google to exclude a certain page
Some things may be wrong with your Robots.txt or Sitemap file(s)
Lack of value, which means that Google believes that your page doesn’t add any value or has become irrelevant due to outdated info
To search Google’s index for a certain page, you should use the following search query:
site:domain.com inurl:your-page-slug (to search for this very page you would use the following query: site:gaydemon.biz inurl:interested-in-hiring-a-professional-google-seo-expert)
Your Google Webmaster Tools account often gives you some information about whether certain pages have or haven’t been indexed - and why/not. In some cases, this may help you to get pages (back) into their index. Sometimes, the reasons remains a complete mystery though.
I would also caution on hiring someone. Most don’t know what works and wont improve anything. SEO is probably easier and more useful for non adult sites that a focused on products or local markets. Pocoloco’s advice is very good, check those points.
Im just being honest here It just does not work in the porn world!
Its a weird and wonderful upsidedown world were left is right but is also left and also up and down at the same time oh and multi directional.
Things that would get you banished in normal google SEO such as link wheel and other black hat tactics are still how most of the smaller tube networks get number 1 rankings for strange terms, and those who follow fully compliant google seo end up getting hit with algorithm changes and penalties.
the best way to get good SEO in this industry is just to keep creating unique content and taking what google gives you and obviously following all of @pocoloco 's advice above.
Not sure I entirely agree. White hat techniques work for both adult and mainstream. I’m talking about the technical stuff handling duplicate content properly, having proper <title> tags, etc.
I agree, just don’t waste your money. I tried this route and it was very painful. The expectation was that I should be hitting social media hard, posting to facebook etc,etc. They could not understand that what may work with a mainstream site could not be done with adult.
These companies have a very narrow and formulaic view of what needs to be done, and to be honest I dont think its anything special. Its based on best practice that anyone can look up.
To clarify I agree Jay! The issue I see is there really is little to be brought from SEO companies who tend to focus more on link and social building, and since to my knowledge there is no real adult seo companies out there itâs better to try do the best yourself than âget someone inâ.
Your literally an expert compared to me in this space, Iâve learnt loads off your posts over the years for both seo and fighting the google gremlin, but from what I can gather from others experiances some white hat stuff has eventually ended up hurting them. Not that I would ever advise anyone to go black hat as it will eventually end in tears in the future, being too lean in adult seo can do as much damage as itâs intended to prevent (in some cases).
when you consider how many toxic backlinks a site like porn hub has with almost 0 effect, compare that to a very large blog, toxic links from a single site can kill traffic overnight even if 98% of their links are clean.
good titles and site structure I agree will go a long way and basics such as appropriate titles are a must, but thatâs something only a webmaster can master, an outsider seo Guy is just going to target the hell out of keywords without knowing the weight those keywords carry or seemingly donât. And thatâs if they donât just scam you out of your money with some fake Indian prepared seo package that ultimately does way more damage than is good.
Thanks for the advice. I guess I’ll skip the idea of looking for a pro SEO person. Still a mystery as to why that post I mentioned wasn’t showing up since I seemed to be following all the rules. I just wish there was a way I could send a post directly to Google and have them tell me why they didn’t index it.
When a year ago people here advised me not to waste my money on SEO, I still decided to do it, being hopeful of the promise that gave me Indian SEO gods. The result was literally nothing, so I tend to agree that there is no such thing as adult SEO. SEO doesn’t work for our industry at all.
Google Search Console will tell you why they aren’t indexing a particular URL. Just enter the URL at the top where it says “Inspect any URL on YourDomain.com”.
Also, make sure you submit the RSS feed from your blog as a sitemap, so they know the URL exists.
As many have already said, most of those claiming to be SEO specialists aren’t. They’re working with what might have been common practice ten years ago, or just making it up as they go along. I would dare say that up to 80% of those claiming they can help you won’t be able to, many of them will just fuck things up and demand payment for it.
Focus on getting the technical aspects right. Make sure your site can be crawled, it’s as fast and easy to navigate as possible, and that you don’t cover it with ads or make the experience of visiting it negative. Once that’s done the real “SEO” work is in the content you publish.
When I started out just over ten years ago it really mattered if you put keywords into a post, but even that doesn’t matter so much now. Google will look at the entirety of the content, search for synonyms, consider regional dialects and slang terms, and pretty accurately work out what the page is intended to do. If you’re writing content that process will be automatic.
Use fewer outgoing affiliate links, write content that’s interesting, funny, unique… and use a lot of internal linking to relevant content.
We really are long past the days of being able to just write a couple of lines of text and upload a gallery. These days you need to entice people in with something they want to stick around for. Content actually is king, not because of Google and SEO, but because you want those people who visit to come back, to follow you on social media, to join your newsletter.
People might disagree with me on this, but I believe two of the most important factors are social media engagement and return visits. Google will see how many visitors are coming from shared links and how many of them stick around to read, and then come back again a week later. Focusing on that will do far more than any SEO service could.
And remember when Google said they’d never use Google Analytics data against the webmaster? Well the whole page speed stuff shows they have the same data from other sources and they can use that against you all they want. Chrome users are giving them entire browsing histories. So they see quite a lot. Which is why Conran is saying you should pay attention to UX issues like time on site, return visits, etc.