Getting profitable, high-quality traffic from the Search Engines is not as hard as some people think (or want you to believe) it is. In this first part of my new series, I'll show you the two biggest factors to getting a decent listing:
Before deciding to get into the "adult business," I worked on a number of mainstream sites, and one of my jobs was as Marketing Manager, where I was responsible for bringing fresh surfers to our sites. Using Search Engines and Directory sites for sustained long term traffic growth was one of the best and most reliable techniques at my disposal. Here's a few tips that will help you to achieve better results:
Use Your Own Domain
If your goal is to make money from your own online ventures, then you are really running a business, not playing with a hobby, so treat your operation as a business. Purchase a relevant domain name, and avoid using free and / or 'ISP' email address (such as username@aol.com or username@hotmail.com).
Using your site's main keywords, hyphenated within your domain name, can mean a great boost in relevancy, and ranking. While "Bob's Big Boobs Page" may have a lot to offer 'big boob' fans, he will likely notice a huge change in ranking order, with no other changes than his domain being "bobspage.com" versus "big-boobs-breasts-and-tits.com" to illustrate one easy example.
Be sure to host your domain on a reliable server that offers a good balance between speed, support, and cost — and avoid 'free hosting' and 'unlimited bandwidth' offers. Remember, you get what you pay for, and if what you pay is nothing, then nothing (or next to nothing) is what you are usually going to get:
Many Search Engines and Directories will not list free-hosted sites (or not rank them high enough for their listing to be worthwhile to you). The reason is simple: free-hosted pages are usually not 'serious' pages, and so there are many that go missing, resulting in 404's ('page not found' errors). If all these pages were treated 'seriously' by their authors, they would be up on reliable, paid hosting accounts. If you can't treat your own content seriously, no one else will either, and it's hard to make money when you're seen as a 'joke.'
Be serious about what you are doing with your business, and you will find that others (including the Search Engines) will take you seriously as well.
Correct Content Collections
Consider what the true nature of a 'proper' web site is: it is a collection of content posted for others to benefit from. Examining this all further, we find that the depth, breadth, scope, and range of this collection, along with the type and format of the content, the 'others' who make up the target market, plus the perceived benefits that they receive from obtaining this content are all variables in our own internal equations that we use in order to determine the real 'worth' of any web site from our own personal point of view.
These factors are also likely to be variables in the Search Engine's relevancy algorithms which are used to determine the listed site's 'worth,' or in other words, used to determine the listed site's ranking order. A site ranked as '#1' is obviously perceived by the Search Engine's as more 'worthwhile' than the site ranked '#1,000,000' when viewed in context of the Search Query Terms.
In practical terms, the factors that we need to be concerned with from the SE's point of view are "the depth, breadth, scope and range of this collection along with the type and format of content." While it's easy to recall that old saying "A picture is worth a thousand words:" when it comes to the type of material the SE's consider to be actual 'content,' words definitely enjoy a major advantage, and the more the merrier — as long as it's relevant. A good rule of thumb would be to not exceed a keyword density of 15%...
Ensuring that your pages offer adequate content that is truly relevant to your targeted key words and phrases is arguably the number one factor in being appropriately ranked. I say 'arguably' because nowadays it really seems that 'money' is the number one factor, but this I assert means inappropriate page ranking. If you have more time than money, then ensuring that each of your SE submitted pages offers at least 500 words of text on it will help you to get a decent ranking.
You're now thinking that there's no way that you can put this much text on a page, especially without resorting to the old 'search and replace' key phrase 'Story Spam' tactics that many webmaster's once used, but you can! All you need to do (for one example) is to make verbose 'warning' pages that describe all of the amazingly hot 'big boob' (or whatever) content that your site offers!
Keep your pages both logical and readable, and use the same key words and phrases that you used in your META tags, although don't exceed the keyword density one would typically expect to find in a non-marketing piece. A good rule of thumb would be to not exceed a keyword density of 15%, or in other words, no more than 15 out of every 100 words should be a key word. More than that, and you will face a chance of being penalized for SE Spamming.
If you apply these two simple and basic techniques to your Search Engine marketing program, than you can expect to see much better results. In my next article, I will cover some more new techniques to give your site a boost!
