At the outset, the one thing you should know is that Google does not treat your adult website any different than any other site. That said, Google does retain its tenets of a safe search, and as such, Google algorithms have a way of unearthing adult content. Aside from that, there is no particular bias against your adult website. And you as an adult webmaster need to understand this, warring against your bias to ensure a better adult website. This pervasive myth that Google penalizes your adult website for the sake of it is not based on fact but is a neat pillar of SEO Lore. Its origins are steeped in the underhanded tactics of adult webmasters to try and rank higher in an immensely competitive industry. And because of that, Google penalizes such behavior, often deindexing your adult website. You as an adult webmaster are left holding your gonads in befuddled expression. 

The adult industry as you probably know is superlatively competitive and the Internet never stops becoming bigger. This increase in demand leads to more adult websites baying for attention, and search engines like Google are always keeping you on toes so that users can be appeased. The stipulations for the publishing of adult content are rather rigid, As a result, you as an adult webmaster needs to have a specialized program for the digital marketing of your adult website. It is noteworthy to note that each month,

“the adult industry websites accommodate more traffic than Twitter Netflix, and get this, Amazon collectively.”

Google Updates 

The algorithms that Google makes are a complicated framework utilized to retrieve data from the indexed pages and deliver the best-desired results of a search query within the shortest time possible. The Google search engine deploys a collection of ever-changing algorithms that use a myriad of ranking signals to ensure that search engine result pages (SERPs) are relevant. Earlier on its existence, Google only carried out a modicum of updates to its algorithms. Contrary to those days, Google nowadays runs thousands of updates each year. Let’s look at some numbers: in 2018, Google implemented 15,096 Live traffic experiments and executed 3,324 changes to its search algorithm.

These updates have caught many adult webmasters off guard, but then again, you cannot prepare for a Google update. 2018 and 2019 saw Google make broad core updates to their search algorithm. You, as an adult webmaster, are always asking what you can do to improve your ranking. There are several things to consider, which we shall look at throughout this conversation. However, as a point of note, you should know that over two decades, a lot of search engines have carried out updates, not to mention Google, and these litanies of updates, the best recourse has and will always remain this: wait. Why wait? Well because every significant update has proceeded with another update that upends the previous update in what Google dubs as a refresh. According to Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella, it is good to sometimes pause and hit refresh, which Google does every so often. Therefore, with that in mind, as an adult webmaster, all you can do is wait, but I don’t mean you fold your hands and sit on your laurels- you need to proactively wait; do what you have to do to get better and ameliorate your adult site. The refresh period is for Google to fix its algorithms to diminish the instances of false positives. 

A Note On Google’s 2020 Algorithm Update

On January 13th, Google began its broad core algorithm update, and come Thursday morning the update was done. This was a global update and was not tied to any geography, demography, language, or category of websites. Everyone believes that this was a major update and a huge number of websites were impacted, although not so much for the adult websites (we are guesstimating that the figure remains more or less around the 2018-2019 figure of 1.4%). As usual, the YMYL (Your Money Your Life) niche got stabbed pretty hard and deep. That said, suffice it to say that there is a humongous shift at the apex of the SERP results for the Finance and Health categories and there were greater increases for all categories when you observe the prime 10 results. As usual, Google comes out to say that for any webmaster there is no particular thing that can be ameliorated; Google’s guidance on this “Speed Update” remains as it was in the other previous broad core updates. A lot of volatility was witnessed, as a result of the update and SEMRush reports that increased volatility was noticed in Online communities, Arts, Games, Entertainments, and Finance outside of News and Sports. The most volatile categories according to SEMRush, outside of Sports and News, were Online communities, Games, Arts & Entertainment, and Finance. But SEMRush speculated that there was no specific Google hit list. Google officials announced that it has rolled out an algorithm update that will restrict URLs that are shown in the featured snippet to appear again within the first ten organic search results.

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Public Liaison for Search stated in a tweet that web pages that get a snippet position feature also known as position zero will not show up again in the SERPs. According to Danny, this change in the algorithm will make sure that there is no clutter in the SERPs and that only pertinent information gets listed. Moreover, Danny declared that the featured snippet will be considered as one of the ten lists of the SERPs.

Google’s 2018 Broad Core Algorithm Update

The first of August saw Google conduct a broad core algorithm update and upon its analysis, it affected medical and health websites in general, not to mention Your Money Your Life Sites (YMYL), and was aptly nicknamed the “Medic Update”. According to several online researchers, it was found that almost 50% of the affected businesses were in the health and medical space.

Google’s 2019 Broad Core Algorithm Update

In June 2019, Google ran a broad core algorithm update, which was highlighted by the contentious feedback that came from every direction. Pundits termed the move as aggressive. Amidst all that noise, Google seeks to remind all webmasters, including you, the adult webmaster that the point of updates is also driven by the need for greater user experience. The websites that were positively and negatively affected by the update included a lot of new sites, and in the case of the latter impact: CCN, formerly known as Crypto Coin News, and Daily Mail had severe losses in traffic. The 2019 update will punish general blogs and news sites that are perceived to be less-authoritative sources of information. Even more so, sites that are focused on technical categories like health and finance, but indicate limited sources, qualifications, and references to support their claims will have diminished visibility in the SERPs. 

Google’s 2019 update and its BERT release mean that its focus is on intent. What does this mean? In short, Google will reward websites that practice a greater system of specificity in the answering of search queries and their published content. This is nothing new, and one could state that this is the natural evolution of search since 1998 when Google was founded. So, as an adult webmaster, if the content in your adult site is not relevant, and the intent of your content is not to create value, Google will know, and so will your audience the consequences of which you already know.

Why Google Updates Affected Adult Websites In 2018 and 2019?

As an adult webmaster, if your adult website was among the 1.4% negatively affected in both the 2018 and 2019 updates, then it’s most likely of the following reasons: you have no actual business information-no contact page, telephone number, street address essentially private WhoIs information; you also lack no editorial oversight- as an adult webmaster, you should be familiar with both historical and contemporary editorial insights; the other thing, you probably do as an adult webmaster is misuse redirects, especially if you have a slow page load time; also, the use of black hat tactics such as cloaking; and whenever to you fail to use https; a bad UI/UX like the incessantly annoying ads and pop-ups, which usually is a consequence of low content, too; inadequate internal linking; your adult webiste does not have E.A.T (Expertise, Authority, and Trust), yes even your adult website can have the same; stupid click-bait titles, and irrelevant useless content; and lastly, and surely not the least, the reason why you as an adult webmaster are having problem with your adult website traffic and ranking is because it is not optimized for mobile users, which is where all the attention is in contemporary culture.

Also, you should have this at the back of your head that adult sites tend not to have regular search engine optimization like other non-adult related sites. Adult sites are plagued with very few options to perform SEO, which means when done, it has to be excellent and precise. 

Notably, as an adult webmaster, you should understand that most sites don’t accept adult content posting no matter how qualified the content. The majority of the bookmark sites, directory sites, PR and article sites will erase your content momentarily after you have posted your content. Google, on the other hand, does not accept PPC and Ad Words for adult sites. Building and growing an adult business is definitely a challenge in the present scenario. 

Most Important Considerations Among Google’s Top 200 Ranking Factors

Of course, you are familiar with the fact that Google uses over 200 ranking factors in their search algorithm. Below are nine considerations that Google considers in its 200 ranking factors. Some of these nine things are proven, others are speculation and controversial. I did not go into much detail, but I highlighted the most important things that you as an adult webmaster need to pay attention to in order to recover from the penalties imposed on your websites and also to avoid future blows by Google. 

Page-Level Considerations

It is believed that title tags that begin with a keyword are more likely to perform better than the ones that put the keyword at the tail end of the tag. Granted, its importance has gradually diminished, however, it does remain a vital on-page SEO consideration. 

The Power Of Backlinks

As a point of note, old domain backlinks tend to be more powerful than new domains. In Google’s algorithm, the numeracy of referring domains is one of the most critical ranking elements. 

Site-Level Considerations

Google has always been categorical that they are ready and willing to punish sites that offer up anything novel or have utility, particularly weak affiliate sites. It pays to have a great site architecture, which in turn assists Google to thematically arrange your content simultaneously aiding the Googlebot in accessing and indexing all the pages of your adult website.

User Engagement Interfacing

Google gives a SERP boost to pages that have a high CTR for that specific keyword. RankBrain, Google’s AI algorithm, is believed to measure and calibrate how users engage with the search results, ranking the SERPs accordingly. Also, there seems to be a correlation between bounce rate and rankings.

Specialized Algorithmic Rules

As an adult webmaster, you probably know that the adult websites you regularly visit tend to be bumped up in the SERPs of your searches. Your search chain will determine your later SERPs. For example, if you search for “Bang Bros” then search for “BDSM”, Google will probably rank BDSM porn sites higher in the SERPs. If your site is great, users come to it more and if Google checks your users’ histories, you get a boost if you are always there. Like I mentioned earlier, adult sites have more traffic than sites like Amazon, so leverage that.

On-Site Considerations: Thin Content and Excessive Pop-Up Ads 

If your adult site has low-rung content, especially content farms, then it will be less visible after Google throws a Panda penalty at you; and if you as an adult webmaster that is fond of allowing pop-ups and distracting ads, then you will be caught up in the ‘Pandamonium’, get it! Google’s official Rater Guidelines Document stipulates that distracting ads and pop-ups are a signal of a low-quality site. Also, being rather sneaky with your redirects will put you on Google’s radar, and you definitely get penalized, perhaps even de-indexed. 

Brand Power

When people go to Google’s search bar, they are searching for brands, and when Google sees your brand being searched, then it figures that your site is an actual brand. You need to ask yourself as an adult webmaster, do users use a specific keyword with your brand? And as a result, Google may give you a SERP boost for non-branded keyword searches. Also, a branded anchor text is a strong consideration, it’s simple but robust. Your brand presence and activity on social media profiles is also a strong signal for search engines. 

Find time to look for catch social media updates and build a brand following on social media of your choice. It is advised to stick to one social media at a time if you don’t have ample time at hand. You can consider hiring a social media marketing agency to manage your social channels and build followership. 

Unnatural Backlinks

As an adult webmaster, there are times when your sites can get hacked, and in such an instance, Google can drop you from the SERPs. Additionally, when you launch a new adult website and get an abrupt upsurge of links, then you can sometimes get put in the Google Sandbox, which limits search visibility temporarily. Google believes that an unnatural deluge of links is a sign of fake links. 

How Adult Webmasters Can Safeguard Their Adult Businesses From Google Updates? 

Own Multiple Sites So You Can Rank Better

New adult websites are published daily and the industry keeps augmenting and its nowhere close to being saturated. Your essential challenge as an adult website, which I stated earlier is that websites don’t want to link to adult domains. So what do you do? 

If you are an adult webmaster, there is almost no other way for you to get to the top without investing in building backlinks. Hiring an adult agency is an obvious choice if you want to let an expert handle your backlink building for you. Or you can choose to hire a freelancer or virtual staff if you want to delegate the work yourself and seek help 

Ongoing SEO Monitoring For Your Adult Website

As an adult webmaster, there are particular rules that you need to follow. Always keep a close watch on your competition and the health of your website. Perspectively, a bit over 12% of the Internet is filled with adult websites, and they get more visitors than the largest user base in large brand websites. Monitoring what your competitors are targeting, tweaking or improving your backlink framework, and monitoring your website SERPs regularly can help you in numerous ways. 

Persistent Quality Tiered Link Building

Link-building can be a long and arduous task, specifically if you have a long term vision in mind. Also, you would do well to make connections with other adult webmasters in the adult industry. The phrase you need to remember in these interactions is- “How can I help?” And the way you can help is offered to be a guest poster on their sites. Offer to write a guest post on their sites. You can also post a review on your website and ask them to link back. As an adult webmaster, you can leave reviews in adult product sites or porn sites; writing listicles that touch on these sites, followed by contacting your fellow adult webmaster about the post. You can either choose to contact them before or after publishing the content, then request a link back to your adult website. 

Linkbacks should be about quality, not quantity, and that’s when research is necessary. Link building must be natural. A few years ago, Pornhub got more than a thousand links from high E.A.T. news websites. They easily got it by donating a tree for every 100 views on video? Perhaps you need to find even more creative ways for your adult website to thrive. 

As an adult webmaster, do not be tempted to undertake to build up anchor text links aggressively so that you rank your adult website rapidly. You should know that Top Tier links are the ones with high authority and sustainable trust flow, which link to your website. 

But these Top Tier links don’t come for free, you have to earn them through world-class content, which doesn’t necessarily you have to sell your organs, it only means that you have to be creative enough. These Top Tier links are not easy to build, but you have to have a long term vision for your adult website. You need to link your website to an already established adult website with high domain authority.  

Running Checks On Competitors

The adult industry is highly competitive. If you are not checking on how your competitors are innovating, then you are dying a slow death, if not a quick one. One key tactic as an adult webmaster is competition research that involves comparing your odds against the adult websites that rank on page one for target keywords analysis. The point of competitor research with a special focus on target keywords research is to eliminate any haphazard action by unearthing the real search volume where necessary, particularly if you want to optimize for long-tail keywords. The other thing you should bear in mind as an adult webmaster is that content is king, coupled with great design, and optimized for your audience, then there is a greater chance of you succeeding.