By Adrian DeGus
YNOT – Search marketing has come a long way since the introduction of search engines. What worked in the beginning didn’t work a year later, and what worked last year doesn’t necessarily work now. Some strategies, however, worked so well throughout a period of time that adult webmasters still cling to them hoping they will continue to work today. Other adult SEO strategies were just so easy that some webmasters still use them due to a perceived lack of time to work on more efficient, more reliable strategies.
Following is a list of the riskiest SEO practices that should be avoided, and why.
1. Too many links from low-value pages
Blasting thousands of links to very low-value pages such as forum profiles, link dumps and blog comments does not work as well as it used to. Search engines like Google easily detect these link-building strategies and actively flag them as spam.
Building thousands of links from low-value pages won’t necessarily hurt your rankings (if it did, than negative SEO would flourish) but it’s certainly not going to help. It can be damaging to your site, however, if you only have these low-value links. If you only work on building links from low-value sources, then you will expose yourself to the potential of not only link devaluations but also automated and manual penalties.
2. Obvious link-building schemes
Search engines like Google are very good at detecting link-building schemes these days. Google, in particular, considers link-building schemes an attempt to manipulate the system. This was of little concern to adult webmasters in years past because, despite Google’s disapproval, the schemes worked.
The playing field changed in 2012 with the launch of the Penguin algorithm update, which specifically targeted linking and over-optimization schemes. Because of this, for the first time in Google’s history you can now receive negative link value through links utilizing obvious schemes, such as link wheels. Link wheels create obvious patterns that Google does not consider “natural”; therefore, the search engine actively devalues any link value passing through them.
Link wheels may still be useful for link indexing, but are not recommended for linking to your primary sites.
3. Using the same keyword in your anchor text
Google Penguin, mentioned above, also targets anchor text within links. If you use the same keyword in the majority of your anchor text, it’s going to look unnatural and your links are going to be devalued or penalized because of it. The effect is amplified if the over-optimized links are on very low-value pages.
To avoid being bit by Penguin, you need to add variety to your anchor text.
4. Poorly duplicated content
Google released another big algorithm update in 2011 called Panda. Google Panda targeted sites using thin or duplicated content. The primary target for Panda was mainstream webmasters, since they heavily utilize strategies such as article marketing and automated content creation. Adult webmasters were affected as well, however, and because of this we now have to follow the same new guidelines on content duplication and usage that mainstream webmasters follow. In particular, we need to spend more time properly spinning our content.
Content spinning is the practice of formatting content in a way that creates multiple versions of it, for example {blue|white|red} will randomly generate either blue, white or red when processed. Many tools exist to assist with content spinning (I recommend The Best Spinner), but how well you spin is now more important than ever.
If you let your spinning software automatically spin your content, the end result can be jumbled text that doesn’t read naturally. Because of Panda, Google now detects this and will devalue accordingly. Instead, it’s recommended webmasters take the time to spin their content manually so that every generated version is easily readable. The Best Spinner makes it very easy to spin content manually.
5. Overly optimized pages
There are many old optimization tricks that used to work but don’t anymore. They include:
- Keyword stuffing.
- Duplicate content.
- Excessive outbound links.
- Keyword usage in tags such as HTML comments, noscripts and alt tags in design-related graphics.
- Exact keywords used in the anchor tags of internal links.
- Content duplicated on pages optimized for different locations (Boston Escorts, Chicago Escorts).
- Link stuffing in sidebars and footers.
Search engines have evolved so they no longer need to rely on us to tell them what our pages are about and what keywords we should be ranked for. They now utilize hundreds of different factors when evaluating our sites, many of which are outside of our direct control. Consequently, search engines now place greater value on sites that are designed and written for humans rather than for search engine bots. They prefer to rank sites that are useful and relevant to a search — something that will provide real value to their users rather than sites that simply meet arbitrary content and keyword metrics.
Summary
These five risky SEO practices represent only the more common strategies that don’t work well anymore and that can result in page devaluation and possible penalties. There are, of course, many more SEO strategies that should be avoided than the ones listed here. A good way to determine whether a tactic you’re considering is risky is to ask yourself how easy the tactic is to accomplish. If it’s very easy, very fast or very cheap, then it’s more than likely not going to work and can be potentially damaging to your SEO efforts.
Adrian DeGus is a 12-year adult industry veteran and founder of Adult SEO Training, a popular service that helps webmasters, program operators and affiliate managers to learn in-house SEO. Adult SEO Training is the only private SEO coaching service catering to the adult industry. DeGus also personally provides complete SEO services for many large programs in the adult industry.
