Over the course of what now amounts to a little over 8 years of evaluating both incoming and outgoing adult traffic from a broad scope of sources, I’ve seen a plethora of traffic generating techniques employed, ranging from carefully-crafted professional marketing campaigns to outright scams perpetrated by amateurs so unskilled, to call them “con artists” would be an insult to well-practiced grifters everywhere. From spam to spyware, top 100 lists to CJ scripts, the affiliate traffic space has seen more experimentation than the waning hours of a fraternity kegger.With as much as has changed over the years, and with more flexibility available due to the dramatic expansion in support infrastructure and user-end bandwidth, I find myself most struck by the things that have not changed with time. In particular, I am consistently reminded of the lasting advantage of text-rich sites, including the most rudimentary, which some might dismiss as being “outdated” upon first glance.

Whatever other changes have been made to search algorithms over the years (and there have been countless revisions), one constant has been a high premium placed on the actual text of a page. Obviously, there is a great deal more to drawing a search engine spider than having relevant text on your page, but on-page text has always been a key element, whether engineering for Excite back in 98, or when working the Google-dominated landscape of today.

One prime example of how a simple, text-rich site can draw major engine traffic for an extended period of time – without resorting to trickery – is jays-xxx-links.com. Jay himself (Quinlan that is, also part owner of up-and-coming affiliate program OCCash) has not been a casual observer of the value of text. Whether it’s the voluminous list of text links, his personal blog, or the almost frightfully word-packed index page, Quinlan’s site is a testament to the power of text.

“As far as text linking goes in the SE game, it is always better to link with text than from a graphic or banner,” Quinlan says. “From a text link the Search Engine can infer some information about what the link is about. It is important to match up what you want your incoming text links to be, based on what keywords you are targeting.”

Naturally, there’s a right way and a wrong way to utilize text, both in terms of working the search engines, and from the perspective of marketing to end users.

“The one thing you want to avoid (at least for Google) is having a 100% match of page title, heading tags, metas, and incoming text links,” Quinlan cautions. “Google uses what is known as an OOP (Over Optimization Penalty) when it sees spammy linking like this. It is best to mix your incoming text links up if you can like so they are not 100% the same, but still contain the keywords you are targeting.”

The value of text is not limited to its magnetism for search engine spiders, of course, and in your quest to be SE-friendly, you cannot forget that human eyeballs are ultimately the intending reading audience for your site’s text. Well-crafted text can contribute mightily to making sales (please note: “well-crafted” does not necessarily connote precise in spelling or grammar), and contrarily, ill-conceived text will kill a surfer’s interest just as quickly as a poorly-selected image.

One must show particular caution when writing text for a highly specialized niche market; for example, as someone who knows virtually nothing about the bondage and discipline scene, were I to market a BD/SM site, I would be inclined to defer to an aficionado of the form when it came to writing copy for the site, just as I would defer to a tech for an operation beyond my technical skill.

In short, since the old cliché “a picture is worth a thousand words” has yet apply to search engine queries, it only makes sense to keep a keen eye on your use of text, throughout your site. Keep it clear, relevant, spam-free, and you too can profit from the proven potency of well-crafted wordplay.