Adult SEO: The Basics of Link Building

There are lots of different ways to gain links to your adult website and it can be easy once you have a process for doing so.

Compared to the same practice for other sites – focusing on broad subjects like travel, sports and fashion – there are advantages. For one, you have fewer competitors, leading to a much lower level of competition for results. The main downside is the lack of link-building opportunities, as some sites do not wish to associate themselves with the adult niche. That still shouldn’t prevent you from building a link profile for your adult site, which we’ll explore in this piece.

Tip 1: Assess the competition

Like we’ve mentioned, there are fewer link-buiding opportunities for adult sites (a positive and a negative). One way to gain a decent boost is to build a strategy based on the link profiles of your competitors.

First, you must create a spreadsheet for all of the links of places you want to make a backlink on. You then use a tool for assessing the backlinks of 8-10 of your nearest competitors and copy them into your excel.

The key things to remember here are the Trust flow and domain authority, both of which help to identify a good link. Free tools like Majestic will help you do this and find hundreds of places to develop backlinks.

Tip 2: Tap into a community

Using forums and comment boxes are an easy way to build links wherever you want. Although Google has recently given less prominence to this technique, it is worth a small amount of your time.

You can identify good commenting opportunities by typing in keywords like ‘1 comment’, ‘2 comments’ etc which show pages with comments in them. ‘Disqus’ is also worth a go, as this is a popular commenting platform.

Similar rules apply to forums and their own platforms; ‘powered by ip.board’, ‘powered by Fireboard’ and ‘powered by vbulletin’ allowing you to find sites in a similar fashion.  

When commenting on forums and on articles, paste the full link of the page being targeted and avoid using ‘anchor text’ as this can increase the chance of a Google penalty.

Tip 3: Get friendly

Lots of adult sites will have a section for ‘our friends’, which is usually a list of sites which have asked for a backlink in return for the same thing on their own domain. For the outbound strategy, be sure to use signals like trust flow and domain authority to identify and contact sites that you feel will give you a good boost. On the inbound – the people contacting you – check they have a similar level of traffic to your page, else there is not much point in using them.

If you want to learn a bit more about exchanging links, take to this page.

Read also SEOFinding Adult SEO Keywords — Tools and Methods Explained

Tip 4: The old routines

There are a handful of methods which used to help sites build links. Now, they serve to diversify a link profile and enable it to have a more natural feel.

Some of the little steps for making big gains include:

1. 1. Varying the anchor text –  Adding a few useless words can make some links appear more natural. It’s worth doing this as well as keeping things to the point.
   2. Mix the quality – Another natural boost can be had by ensuring an even spread of quality for your links. Having a third of your links high quality, a third moderate quality and a third low quality can send off a good signal.

• Monitor volumes – Try to keep to a maximum number of backlinks for the day, as you don’t want to appear spammy. Something like 3-5 backlinks per day is perfect.

• Go niche – Google likes links that come from related sites, so it might be wise to gain half of your links from sites similar to yours.

Each of these tips may not create much of a result on their own, but together they sure are worth doing.

Tip 5: Give a helping hand

SEO is a community and you’ll find that helping other sites to go about their business can really pay off when it comes to driving links. Here is the four-step process for assisting sites and getting something in return:

1. Make a list of sites you want to target. Use tools like Moz and Majestic to assess their trust flow and use this to create a list of domains, ordered by quality.
2. Take to each site and look out for anything that might be wrong with it. Things like 404s, deleted videos, outdated content, slow-loading pages and other elements should be noted. It might be that you simply have a few ideas for improvements – list them all down.
3. Gain the email addresses for all of the sites, place them in your spreadsheet, then contact the site and let them know what you’ve found.
4. Once you’re talking to them, take the chance to tell them about your site and ask them if they wouldn’t mind giving you a link in return for the advice. When doing this, make sure the link is ‘dofollow’ (it is tracked) and take whatever you can get, as even a direct url can have an impact.

Tip 6: Sponsor a post

Some people will say to stay away from paying for links, but sponsoring a post is slightly different. Sites as big as Forbes will allow advertisers to pay money to sponsor their content and therefore pay for links, so it’s certainly not ‘black hat’.

One thing to remember is that this can be expensive. Most sites will charge around $100 per post, in some cases as much as $300 and behind. That said, you can always negotiate as adult sites don’t have as many requests for sponsored posts. Do this by saying their prices are way above your budget, which tends to do the trick.

To find out if it’s worth the price they’re quoting, be sure to assess the quality of the site and check it’s not just a link farm. The same rule applies here: build a spreadsheet and fill it with sites which use sponsored content for monetisation. You’re after quality links on sites with good domain authority and trust flow, strong content and an acceptance of ‘do follow’ links. You then create a column for their contact details and away you go.

Read also SEO for Adult Sites — How to Drive Organic Traffic

There are a selection of other tips which help you gain links in specific places. Each requires a different approach and we’ll start with websites and blogs.

Obtaining links from websites and blogs

The key here is in gaining relevant links from sites which are in your niche. First, you want to make a list of these domains, then email them about the benefits of a link trade. Usually your site will appear on a ‘friends of’ widget, but always ask them to show you where it is for proof.

A pro tip is to expect very little to start with, as newcomers won’t get onto big sites that easily. Target a site with a good amount of traffic and build from there.

Obtaining links from social media

Google has recently given a lot of importance to links on social platforms, which can really help your SEO if you get it right. When writing a post, remember to post good content – stuff that people will share – and include a call to action that requests people to share what you’ve put up.

Scheduling posts can take a lot of time, so it might be worth using tools like Hootsuite to automate the process. There are even tools that allow you to share content automatically to your social channels, which skips out a bit of the process.

When choosing a platform, remember that popular networks like Facebook will ban some forms of content. Tumblr, Reddit and Twitter are less strict and better options for adult content.

Obtaining links from directories

Spammy link-building directories are not the kings in today’s world, as Google will instantly blacklist your website if they find you on a domain with a bad reputation. If you do go down this route, only target quality directories rather than ones that will get you in trouble.

Email lists

Email lists are used by adult performers to build a following, add value to their accounts and generally help them promote whatever they are selling. They won’t help an adult tube site too much, but they can aid SEO in some cases.

Using the list to spread the message, an email list owner can announce the exchanging of free gifts for a share of some content on a social network or otherwise. Putting a tube video behind a form which requires the user to like a Facebook page or follow a Twitter account is a great way of gaining links via email pushes.

We might have a few tips above but they are worth doing. Lots of things come into ranking a website and you really can’t do it without allocating a bit of your time.

The basics of link wheeling for adult SEO

If you know a little bit about link building for adult SEO, you might have heard of a technique called ‘link wheeling’. This is essentially a way of creating high quality backlinks by trading links between sites that you own. Google has clamped down on the practice in recent years (the worst offenders seeing penalties) but it remains a popular technique in the adult niche.

The best thing about link wheeling is that it benefits a whole ecosystem of sites. Here’s a graph that shows a web of connected sites:

Again, the key is in establishing relevant links. If your website is about milf porn, then try to only gain links only from milf-based websites. This helps your SEO but also ensures that you are getting the visitors you want.

There are lots of ways of getting links onto your sites and one technique is to link internally. For example, if you have lots of videos of a specific pornstar, you can link to a page for them via the description in each clip. This is actually a great example of how link wheeling can work, as people will often search for videos of a pornstar.

Read also Four Ways to Monetize an Adult Tube Site.

Linking through ‘who’s that pornstar’ sites

Lastly, we want to look at building backlinks through who’s that pornstar sites. Lots of people take to these domains to find a specific performer by showing an image or a video. These are a bit like forums, as people will comment on the post to share the name of the person in the media.

How does this aid your SEO? Well, you can either request the name of a pornstar with a link to them on your website, which should get people commenting on the post and make it rank higher. You can also get a nice organic post by people using your clips and images to find pornstars themselves.

The sites themselves are easy to find, as they often give away clues in their title. For instance, ‘Namethatporn.com’ and ‘Namethatpornstar.com’ are two of the most popular results. This technique, like many of the ones we’ve mentioned, is a highly effective way of building great SEO for your adult site.

Read also Best Adult Ad Networks 2017

Essential tips for avoiding penalties

Next we move onto the darker side of adult link building: the penalties. You can get one of these for lots of reasons and they are extremely hard to recover from. One of the main reasons is over-optimisation, which comes as a result of you trying to play the system too much. Google will study both on-page and off-page factors when examining your site, so you should take these ten points into account:

1. Avoid blackhat techniques
2. Go easy on your linking or risk a penalty from keyword stuffing
3. Never let your keyword density go over 7%
4. Do not duplicate content – produce your own and keep it high quality
5. Avoid linking to spammy sites, link farms or other places with bad reputations – quality beats quantity
6. Keep an eye on grammatical errors and spelling mistakes
7. Don’t game the system – it will catch up with you
8. Adopt a natural approach by slowly increasing the number of links you make per day (don’t input lots at once)
9. Avoid nofollow links as these will not impact your rank
10. Only buy links via sponsored posts and avoid places like Seoclerks, or risk a penalty

With those tips, you can really start to charge your site up the search engine results.

In conclusion

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Read also 10 Best Pop-Under Ad Networks 2017

Read also Best Adult Ad Networks 2017

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