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Is Google F&%king SEO?

Google Privacy Affects SEO

Google maybe watching you but they aren't sharing the information!

Google has just announced a big change to their site. Though from the user point of view it is minor. From the SEO point of view, it is a game changer.

Most of SEO strategy is based on keyword searches. How did someone get to your site? What search terms did they use to find you? The answers to these simple questions give a plethora of information to websites. They give you the specifics on how people find your site out of the millions that are out there. This information can then be programed into your site so that way you come up closer to the top of the search, to hopefully capture more of the traffic using those search terms. Google is now making that information private.

Google announced on Oct 18th that if you are signed into to Google when you conduct a search that your search will be encrypted. Any of the information that would normally be shared with websites will now be kept private, such as:

  • Referrer data- this is the information about what links the users clicked to get to your site. This is how you see who visited your site and where they came from.
  • Keywords- exact keywords and search terms will not be reported.

This will have a big impact on SEO for websites. Information that was freely reported and integral for comprehensive SEO will now be withheld. Google says you can still use their webmasters tool box to find popular and general search terms, but that will hardly help you create a accurate SEO strategy. Of course if you are paying Google for an ad or a sponsored link, you will still get referrer and keyword data, though only on your paid links.

The good thing about this is that currently only 10% of users are signed in. So 90% of the searches will still be reporting data.

 

Why Google+ is Bad for Porn

So how is Google+ different than Facebook?  Well, its not really.  Google+ (or Google Plus) is just as stringent on porn as Facebook. They forbid the content. They do not allow links to adult sites or explicit photos. Will they be as bad as Facebook when it comes to deleting accounts? Well time will tell.

Essentially Google+ is the new kid on the block of social networks. They are trying to compete with Facebook and not doing a terribly great job, despite endorsements from some pretty big people. Most of the activity is still happening on Facebook. Why? Because that is where everyone is! and by everyone I mean the 800+ million people around the world.  In many ways people are tied of learning new social networks. How many profiles have we created? Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumbler…and there are more. Unless it has something that is completely new and unthought of, and circles hardly counts, then it is not likely to be terribly sticky.

But beyond that Google+ is not great for businesses, much less porn. Currently they do not have a business profile option. There is no business page. So the only way you can be on there is as an individual. Then on top of that they won’t let you use a stage name. So forget privacy. Forget anonymity.

Though they are reporting that Google+ Pages for business is being released. However they will not be terribly different than Facebook Pages. Meaning, you will not be able to post adult content, links or anything. So is it a duplicate to Facebook? Not quite, but not far off.

Google Images has Free Porn?

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Friday Feature Photo: SoCal Glamour Girl Tessie Tarrentino

Friday Feature Photo: SoCal Glamour Girl Tessie Tarrentino looking sexy and making me want that cupcake!

Have you ever gone to Google Images and searched for naked women, sex, sexy, boobs, butt, sexy women…yeah, you get the idea.  Yup, you can basically get free porn on Google. Or at least free adult images. You can prevent this, or make the free images work for your site.

Because of the way images register in search engines, there is a good chance that your adult images are being listed on Google Images. When you add pictures to your site, they are often inserted with alt tags, and descriptions, which make searching for images on your site easier. It also gives you better SEO and helps your page ranking. Those tags also ensure your placement on Google Images.

Adult images will not automatically appear in a search.  There is an automatic filter set to “Safe search moderate” that will filter out any truly adult graphics.  But you can easily change the setting and turn off any filtering.

When someone looks at the image, it is a preview that is linked to the host site. If they click “Full size image” it will often open it to a web page that only shows the photo on the page. This makes it very easy for someone to use the image on their site or download it.

Why this is good

  • Get more traffic to your site.
  • Good page ranking via images, SEO.
  • More exposure.

Why this is bad

  • People using your image without permission.
  • People taking the image without going to the site.
  • You get no money from Google Images.

Having your pictures appear in the image gallery is not necessarily the best thing, especially if you are a member-based site. You want people to pay to see your images, not get them for free through an image aggregator.

What you can do

  • Keep all your images behind a members-only wall.
  • Code your images so when people open them up, it goes to your website instead of just showing the image.
  • Watermark your image with your web address.

The best thing to do is watermark any image that appears in the free section of your site.  That way ,if they come up in Google Images, they will have your web url on the image.  This will help prevent people from using your image without your permission, and if they do, you are getting your website out in front of more people. If you are worried, best to talk to your web designer about it. Many of them have cool tricks to bypass this, or other methods they can use to direct people to your site.

The Friday Feature Photo from SoCal Glamour Girls uses the watermark method. All of their photos are branded with the site name.  Also if you try to view the images from their website with the easy, right click “view image” method. All you will get is the frame the picture is framed in on the main page.  It is a great example of creative coding to prevent image theft.


Friday Feature Photo: SoCal Glamour Girl Tessie TarrentinoFriday Feature Photo: This weeks feature photo is the very sexy Tessie Tarrantino from SoCal Glamour Girls. SoCal Glamour Girls is an online magazine and social network of sexy women. The site is beautifully put together with tantalizing content from the very first page.  But the site isnt just sexy pics, you actually get to talk to the girls.  SoCal Glamour Girls is embracing the newest trend in the adult industry and that is engagement.  The girls come online and you can talk to them via chat and web cam.  Then you can continue your conversation on Twitter, as they all have Twitter accounts.  This is a great site to both see and interact with beautiful and sexy women.

Go to their website: www.socalglamourgirls.com

Follow them on Twitter: @SCGlamourGirls

Easy SEO for Porn

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SEO LegsSEO (search engine optimization) is an extremely important tool for your website. Google made this really easy with an auto-populate feature in their search bar.  All you had to do was start typing your keyword and a menu would populate below your typing with a list of potentially related search terms. This was great for figuring out some alternate search terms for your site. However, Google black listed porn. They blocked their search box from auto-populating any terms that might lead to adult content. So if you are an adult site, you have to work a little harder to research your keywords – but not that much harder.

SEO is essentially what allows your website to be found by search engines.  Most people think that SEO is finding keywords to add to meta tags on your page.  If you understanding html coding, that does not sound like a difficult thing to incorporate. However, if you do not do coding, that seems a bit more scary.  Thankfully, meta tags are not the best way to optimize your site for SEO.  Writing your keywords into your copy is the best SEO.

Most of us think that we know what the best keywords for our site will be.  Honestly, you probably know one or two, but most likely you will not guess the rest. Before Google blackballed adult terms, we could just turn to their search box.  Now you need to access SEO and keyword applications using other methods.

The easiest (and free) tool for this is Google Adwords.  Ynot just wrote a great blog post that takes you through the steps of using Google Adwords for keyword research.  Using Adwords, you can search for terms you want to use, and it will give you a list of other potentially relevant keywords and terms. You can also ask it to evaluate your website and it will give you suggestions.

If you have a blog, a great tool for optimizing your posts is Scribe SEO. This is a subscription service, but it’s not expensive, and it does a great job optimizing every post and page on your blog site. It also helps you make sure your SERP (search engine results page) is optimized for search engine listings. It also gives you suggestions for getting backlinks.

Because Scribe SEO is a subscription service you will get more robust SEO help than from just using Adwords.  However, Adwords will still give you great results for keywords and phrases. And you can’t beat free. Once you get your list of words you just need to incorporate them into the copy on your site.

Google Gives Social Proof to Porn

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Sexy woman wearing a tank top that says "google"

Time to talk to people on Twitter, because Google is giving social proof to porn.

So often I see porn stars on Twitter who only tweet content and don’t interact with anyone.  I know we are all the center of our own universes, but if you want to get the clicks you have to  take part, so you can be with them virtually at the center of their universe. I always tell people that the key to a strong social media presence is engagement. You have to talk to people.  Well, that just became even more important.  Google announced yesterday that social search is becoming a truly relevant part of the overall Google search function. This means that Google just gave porn the power of social proof.

Why connections are important

Everything about your web presence is interconnected.  The web is a big web! When you have a website, it gets listed on search engines like Google, who then crawl your site for content and post that content on the search engine. When people search for specific terms that relate to your post, it appears in the search results.  That is SEO (search engine optimization) in a nut shell.  So, if you create a Twitter and link your site, Google picks that up too.  When you tweet content, that content may come up in search results too.

Google has integrated a low level of social search for a while, but they just gave it Viagra.  Search results will now show you if one of your friends has shared a link. It is now connecting all of your connections and integrating them into your search results.

Who are my friends?

Google’s social circle has gathered information based on your usage. If you have a profile or gmail, you will have a more accurate social profile.  They collect links to social profiles they believe to be yours. Then they take all the friends associated with Twitter, Flicker, gmail, contact lists, etc. and count them in your network.

Social Proof

Friday Feature Photo: Portrait of Burlesque Dancer Kylea Killeen

Friday Feature Photo: The beautiful Miss Burlesque 2010, Kylea Killeen

Showing if a friend or even a distant connection has shared a link acts as a very powerful form of social proof.  Say you are looking at 5 web links, trying to decide which site to go to, and you see that 3 of your friends shared one of the links. You are far more likely to go to that link.  It is the Internet version of word-of-mouth.

Social proof to porn

Porn has had an issue with social proof outside of social networking for a while.  There are tons of websites, so unless you know the name of a specific company it can be hard to find the precise site you want.  Search engines have notoriously been a challenge for porn sites with SEO.  Google has created a black list for their auto search so people don’t accidentally pull up porn search terms.  This is fine for safe browsing, but those terms are based on the most used SEO keywords. This helps the casual searcher discover more effective search terms, but if that casual searcher is searching for porn they are S-O-L.

The new social integration will provide social proof to all adult sites.  If someone has a site link that  is retweeted a lot, this will now appear in the connection recommendation in the search result.  This is excellent for driving traffic to a site.

Retweets matter more than ever!

This is why it is even more important for adult tweeps to interact with their fans.  If you want people to retweet your links, you need to give them more of a reason than a sexy pic. If they talk to you and feel like they have a relationship with you, they are far more likely to retweet your content.  And now, the more retweeted you are the more relevant you will be in Google.


Friday Feature Photo: Kylea KilleenKylea Killeen is this week’s Friday Feature Photo.  I first met Kylea at a club in New Mexico where she was performing. Out of all the beautiful girls in the club, she was the one that captivated me. She is sexy and sensual. It is no surprise that she is Miss Burlesque 2010, Miss Nude US Performer of the year 2009 and a Playboy Golf Girl.  Make sure you check out this up and coming performer, she is not to be missed! Go to her website at www.kyleakilleen.com and follow her on Twitter @kyleakilleen

Google+ Pages: Step-by-Step

It looks like Google Plus is not going to be a Facebook clone after all! The network is pleasantly surprising me with the friendliness of the network to adult entertainment.

Difference from Facebook

  • Pages growing 5 times faster
  • Engagement is lower
  • Clicks are comparable
  • Allow adult links (though they say they don’t in the TOS, they network is being very tolerant)
  • When they suspend a page they give you the option to protest it and get your page reinstated (this usually happens within 24 hours)
  • You can use hashtags
  • You can post in topic related searches. This means if you search for #dating then post while in that search, your post will be tagged by that search making your post more topic related.
  • Indexing to Google immediately upon posting

So if you have not gotten your business on Google+ it is time to join the party. Here is how:

Ready to get your Google+ Business Page?

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to do it.

Google+ Pages Create a Page1 . Sign up: Go to: http://www.google.com/+/business/

  • Click “Create your Goolge+ Page”

Google+ Page Categories

3. Category: Select the main category for your page.

  • Local Business or Place- this is for if you are primarily local or have a physical location.
  • Product or Brand- if you are creating a page for one specific product item or for a brand.
  • Company, Institution or Organization- this is the general business category
  • Arts, Entertainment or Sports- anything having to do with these categories, though often these are people like artists and musician or groups of people like a sports team.
  • Other- If you just don’t quite fit anywhere, you can assign your own category.

4. Sub-Category: After you select a main category you will be able to select a sub category that best describes you.

5. Page Name: Enter in your page name. This is what everyone will see as your page name and how people will find you. Do not make it too complicated and keep it to something that is easy to remember. Tip: Do not put XXX or Sex or really anything that seems to be obviously porn related in the name. That is a sure fire way to get your page removed.

6. URL: Enter in the URL for your website.

7. Age Restriction:You can opt to have age restriction on your page. This is good if you talk about mature issues, alcohol or drugs. The ages restrictions available are 13+, 18+ and 21+. Tip: Best to keep the wolves at bay! Set your page to 18+.

8. Profile Photo: Your profile photo is your face to the world. You may want to put your logo in here, or a picture of you. But whatever you decide make sure that the picture is square. Unlike Facebook, Google+ Pages give limited real estate to your pic. You can make this sexy, but keep it PG13. You don’t want your profile pic to be the reason your new page gets deleted.

9. Tag Line: This is where you get to put some quick little tid bit about your business. Think of this as your elevator pitch. You want something that describes your page and essentially draws someone into the page. This is a good place to be fun and flirty.

That’s it!