SEO for Adult Sites - Treated Differently?
 

So I've been looking at the SEO trends on some of my sites over the past year and can't seem to find any hard and fast rules.

I was wondering if anyone else sees the same with their sites.

In mainstream you hear about how sites with lots of unique content with no ads 'above the fold' and good backlink profiles win out after big updates (Fred etc...)

But my sites seem to have no pattern of SEO strategy in place that favors one aspect of it over another. Some sites have gained traffic that have spammy backlinks and lots of affiliate links all over the place while others which are much cleaner and have better user engagement have lost ??

Do adult sites have different SEO rules than mainstream?

I think the answer is yes.

I have similar experiences - often it's my clean, quality sites dropping in traffic, and the crappy ones rising.

I think SEs simply don't care much about the adult sites. They don't really customize their algos for them, or monitor them closely to rank the quality sites high.
So when they introduce a ranking algo update created mainly for the mainstream sites, its effects on adult site ranks may be weird and random.

One of the overall effects I see is that image and text-based sites have a hard time competing with tubes in the adult SERPs.

It is hard to tell precisely because each of those sites has a different competition and their strategies. The first thing to do before making that judgement is to see how hard is competition and how popular is the niche you are inspecting.

Time on site for porn.

in the past 10 years, hard to tell anything except that google doesn't like affiliate sites.

That is probably a big factor right there.

That's what I feel as well. Which is why I get such inconsistencies.

Yep. Which is why tubes, with ads ALL over the page flashing like neon, Vegas street signs and pop-ups and affiliate links and ads within the videos too, still rank high.

They haven't listened to Google one bit.

Add free content that leads them to your paysite. That will improve your time on site. Concentrate on SEO'ing the pages with free content too and not just your main page. Many people create sub.domains and sub/folders for their free content. Keep everything on the same domain and all together it should improve your domain Authority.

Ray
Hardlinks.org

Bounce rate likely plays a role too. I have seen sites of mine that have lower bounce rates rank better than others with higher bounce rates.

Porn isn't treated differently at all...it's treated *exactly the same*. Matt Cutts from Google has said almost exactly this--"we don't care about porn"

which, paradoxically, is why (IMO) it seems so fucking random and hard to predict.

Internal factors for porn are the same as they are for mainstream--if you have nice bounce rate and time on site, google will like you.

But external factors are fucked. The main issue is, backlinks are the foundation of SEO. But, google treats links from porn sites as scammy, and downweights them, or even considers them as a negative. So if google is treating porn the same as mainstream (I think they are), when a porn site links to a porn site...it's still a scammy link.

So how can a porn site possibly get a non-scammy link? Even pornhub's backlink profile probably looks scammy as fuck to google. Even if you tried to build an "amazing" porn backlink profile by buying lots of links directly from porn webmasters on quality sites...you'd still just be buying a shit-ton of scammy links.

So, it's pretty fucking hard to figure out. Anyone who has good ideas probably isn't sharing them with GFY. The sites that are ranking well right now definitely aren't sharing. I have some thoughts about what is actually working for porn sites, but I don't even want to share.

Definitely though, it seems chicken-and-egg. If you're popular, you do well. If you do well, you're popular.

This is exactly what I believe. The algorithm is designed for mainstream (and downweights porn links) and when they apply it to porn it does weird/random things

For those who are running Porn-Review-Site, I think link exchange is one way to improve Google raking.
I know porn link tends to be a scammy link because of the content.
Review site doesn't contain many porn images or pics.

If you are looking for good porn related linkbacks, they might help.

That's a great point, they don't have any adult images or videos so they are probably getting a pretty big boost over sites that do.

Probably why they can rank so well despite...you know...not having content

I've seen the same myself, thought I was the only one. I have a few sites and I can say that there is no real rule here. Some things though: sites with cloaked affiliate links do better. You must have very good on page optimization. Also sites that get good traffic from other sites seem to do better.

Text/review sites are actually super hard to rank. Maybe they're a good source of links, but I haven't really found that either. A lot easier to rank video sites. As people earlier said, I also think time on site is a major factor for porn sites.

Great input :thumbsup

I think there is an actual penalty for all porn sites. They've been cranking it up over the years which is why you see just random mainstream crap ranking for obvious porn terms. People have been hacking mainstream sites and putting porn on them and they'll out rank everything. They also take specific terms and "mainstream" them. It's impossible to rank in those terms with a porn site. I think there might be a slight shift to bing because of this.

The game is complicated but still, there are rules. It is relatively easy to do on-site SEO. The worst part is building relevant links. It is also the slowest and most boring part. At least for my taste. I was applying rules and got a proper ranking for desired keywords. It takes time. They are not too competitive and with high volume but still, it showed that system works. Also, porn as an industry is very competitive. If you don't have an old site with proper authority, long tail keywords are the way to go. Smart analysis, looking for money keywords. It is incredible what you can find sometimes. I've just discovered two keywords yesterday and I couldn't believe that competition is so weak. Just SEOed pages for them, and waiting for the first results.

that why old domains without traffic but with some backlinks and history
are worth much more than new fresh domains

it takes months, maybe years when new domains will be high
and its very risky, if you will get too much links and too fast, you will lost months or even years... when domain will be marked as spammy
old domains are forgiving this :) and takes just weeks to be visible in google

here are some ignorants who don't know this simple rule
and when someone selling old domains they laugh that better buy new domain for $10 bucks

its almost impossible to get fresh porn domain high fast, or just very risky
heh, not even high, but just visible in google :)

better buy 5 years old stupidporndomain.com domain and work on it for few months
than buy greatporndomain.com and work on it for years


this is my personal experience, i bought few fresh domains and lost my motivation
and go back to my old 10-years old stupidporn.com domains with much better results :)

True....domain age is definitely a huge ranking factor. When I compare top SERP for some keyword, I am looking for aged domains are winning.

What reminded me that I've never sold 15 years old one :)

https://gfy.com/sell-and-buy-forum/12...am-domain.html

I agree. But the video sources are usually provided for everyone. They can build the same video sites which means they don't have its own value. Hence it's hard to get a better ranking.

I remember a porn video site which illegally provide long duration (20 mins or more) vids by editing the whole movies. They were ranked in 3rd or 2nd. (right after the source site)
I don't see them these days. I guess they are banned :1orglaugh

It's a hardwork to create unique contents using free vids or pics...