One reason the Tubes do so well in search
 

There are many different reasons the tubes do well in search.

Factors include visitor retention, massive search footprint, affiliate programs that encourage direct linking to pages on the sites without an affiliate id - eg: Hubtraffic

However one factor that can be tackled by programs and affiliates alike is the use of search engine friendly urls. Another is the correct use of meta tags and schema.

Search Engine Friendly URLs

I am working on a search based project at the moment and am surprised by the number of big name sites that do not use search engine friendly urls.

This is giving the tubes a free kick, a leg up which is so easy to fix.

There is one site that I promote which is one of the biggest pay sites in the industry, yet for all of their archives and videos they use urls like the one below:

www.domain.com/video.php?slug=fucked_by_classmate_1461680

rather than

www.domain.com/video/fucked_by_classmate_1461680

Not only is the search engine friendly URL better for users to understand, it's also better for search engines to understand.

Markup, Meta Tags and Schema

When you're presenting data to search engines you want the search engine to be able to understand what your page is about. While modern search engines are good at doing this without reading meta tags, the use of meta tags and schema can greatly help rankings.

I've come across hundreds of smaller pay sites that use absolutely no schema at all, especially on pages where schema could help search engines understand the relationship of content to the site.

I've also come across several very large pay sites that have hundreds and sometimes thousands of pages with exactly the same meta tag descriptions and titles as their home page.

The use of search engine friendly URLs and correct use of meta tags and schema can greatly enhance search rankings. It might not completely beat the massive tubes like Pornhub but it can help boost rankings and ensure that Google and other search engines understand pages better thus being able to serve relevant results to search queries.

For more information on schema and how you can use it read the link below.

A Guide To Schema Markup & Structured Data SEO Opportunities By Site Type

Great post! :thumbsup

There's only one reason Tubes do well. They're free and in 2016, the only sites that are at the top are free ones. Be they Google, YT, FB or whatever the consumer demands free and will not pay for anything unless they have to.

Even webcams are free.

The solution is to move to a model that uses free and sell the ad space. It started 15 years ago with TGP sites where if 1-100 clicks on a TGP actually ended in a sale everyone thought they had a result. Now it's 1-50,000 getting another 1,000 to look at something they have no intention of paying for is fast becoming pointless.

Getting traffic is easy. The job is to keep it coming back day after day. Retention is the #1.

And that can only be achieved with content. Yes you heard it from me first.

Content is king.

You're missing the point and not addressing the issue I raised.

There are very good pay sites with lots of great promo and free content who do not use correct markup, don't use meta tags correctly (if at all) and don't use schema.

This gives them a huge disadvantage from the very beginning. Sites which do not use the simple and effective technical means to improve their search presence are missing an opportunity to get their content in front of eyeballs.

informative post :thumbsup

You're NOT missing the point and not addressing the issue I raised.This is where it starts. A site getting 100,000 hits a day of people who click back is making less than a site that gets and converts 10.

The skill at making great content, of whatever kind, is higher than the skill of getting lots of traffic when people can buy ads on free sites. This applies to everything not just porn but most certainly includes porn. Yet today this industry holds those who can throw traffic at a site, higher than those who are the key to retaining and converting it.

Helpful post. Thank you, AK.

Paul, this is not a discussion about content, this is a technical discussion about markup, meta tags and schema.

Is it not possible to have a technical discussion in an appropriately named thread without having people like you come in preaching about things which have nothing at all to do with the subject ?

Yes tubes have content, but this thread wasn't about content in and of itself but about how to improve search presence in situations where basic technical methods are not being used to tell search engines about a site, it's content and it's pages.

Good post. I personally have not used meta tags since years ago, because most of the experts claimed them to be obsolete.

I think that you're talking about the meta keywords tag, which isn't useful - sophisticated search engines ignore that tag.

However meta description, http-equiv, charset etc are all important to use, if not essential.

Very good post !

The biggest impact (90%) is unique content, good user experience and link popularity. The rest (10%) are the tags and SEO friendly url's.

I disagree.

If you don't have your meta tags, search friendly urls and schema sorted then you have much less chance of ranking well.

If you present structured data like many sites do, eg: videos, performers, etc then not having schema puts you at a great disadvantage over sites that do this properly.

In case of paysites, does it even matter? All that content is restricted to members only. SE's can't index it anyway, because it's password protected.

Whilst tubes content pages are freely accessible by anyone.

Paul, shut the fuck up.

Seriously.

Yeah it matters.

Lots of big paysites have individual pages for various releases, some include porn star information and maybe previews. Some big paysites do this for every release and some of them have unweildy url structures like

?video=77682&redir=1&file=mp4&site=domain

when they could just have

/video/guys-in-gangbang-episode-1

As for markup and schema, lets take the example of one well known paysite that has thousands of pages dedicated to various models and releases yet has the same meta description on every single page and worse has no schema. Without schema Google (and other search engines) can't provide added context to the search result - which leads to a poor user experience.

The reason I posted this thread is that I see so many sites leaving ranking opportunity on the table while companies like MindGeek are relentlessly pursuing every optimisation advantage they can employ.

If you have a site with thousands of titles, hundreds of models and don't use schema then that's just leaving yourself open to someone doing the job better - unfortunately some of the big tubes do. Tubes ranking highly isn't a problem that will go away so sites might as well spend some time giving themselves a chance rather than just cast the concepts of structured data to the wind.

For years, we have had the same debate. Content v traffic.

Those that support the content side, keep quiet and don't tell anyone how it's done.

The major difference is the people who want to support the traffic side, are determined to tell everyone how it's done. So those who don't have the knowledge can learn and make the teacher's edge, null.

So Muad'Dib, I will allow you to exchange your knowledge with all those who will do the same and make your job harder.

Solution. Open the members area so SE's can access it. But surfers only see thumbs. I did that 10 years ago. :1orglaugh

Google does not give a fuck about friendly urls as long as your titles and basic info are in place, they care 99.999999% about user interaction. Period.

Look at PornHub's urls:
pornhub.com/view_video.php?viewkey=ph57329c320f2d5

Look at AdultWebmasterNet site's urls:
tubegalore.com/search/?q=%22Home+Made%22%7CHomemade&kwid=6013&c=1

Google loves these sites because surfers love these sites, the engines are smart enough to read the urls if needed, but this isn't 2003.

Thanks for the info

Many site owners mistakenly believe they must either compete head to head with tubes fully on SEO or they not bother to do anything at all. Just doing the basics is easy, affordable and smart (whether you plan to engage in a larger campaign eventually or not).

Good post.

You could properly markup your pages and give them friendly seo urls, however, a paysite tour remains a salespage.

Bounce rates, time on site, social sharing, backlinks and return rates are crazy low VS tube sites.

If someone is searching for Dillion Harper (a popular model), it's in google's best interest to serve the user with a site such as a tube where the user can find a few dozen+ videos of the model they are looking for instead of a salespage with locked content or mini-clips.

I agree, better seo for paysites can increase search traffic to an extent. You may be able to pick up some longtail terms and possibly make a few extra sales a year. But don't go crazy and spend thousands on trying to over-optimize your salespage.

Ultimately, you're better off trying a different strategy by creating free content sites that drive traffic to your sales page VS trying to seo optimize your sales pages.

:2 cents::2 cents:

If Google has two pages to choose from to serve a user for a specific ranked position then it will choose the one with a user friendly URL every time if everything else is equal.

There has been plenty of discussion on SEO Roundtable and in in depth articles on Search Engine Land that support my initial statements that search engine friendly URLs and the correct use of markup and schema will improve a sites search presence.

You're correct this isn't 2003, so there is absolutely no excuse for sites not to present user friendly URLs. It's not all that expensive or difficult to do.

This isn't 2003, so using schema to provide relevant information about structured data is not all that difficult either.





You are right to an extent, but why give your opposition a free kick ?

Take a large adult paysite with hundreds or thousands of pages dedicated to releases, then ask the question - would that site do bettter with or without schema ?

If you have any kind of structured data being presented in the pages on a site then schema will help.

Simply throwing ones hands up and crying "oh it's just a sales page" is just giving away an opportunity to be that little bit better than the competition.

I'm really surprised at the number of people in this thread that just blithely disregard the benefit of basic optimisation. There's no shortage of threads on this and other forums about tubes dominating search results, however at the same time it appears consensus is that there is no point doing anything to improve search presence.

Google does not favor one over the other for friendly urls. They understand the fact that Joe The Plumber has no idea about Web technologies and that he shouldn't be listed behind a plumbing competitor even though he is far superior and people visit his site more and stay on site longer just because he didn't configure pretty urls in WordPress.

It's safe to say almost no surfers ever manually type in a full page url. Domains yes but not page urls. They use bookmarks or Google links or social. I have never visited a website and thought "oh thank fuck the urls are pretty" and either does anyone else. If Google rewards this than it would be such a miniscule amount I doubt it helps at all. Not trying to be a dick about this, I just disagree. I strongly believe Google cares about how the surfer interacted with a page and sorts their results accordingly.

This is simply wrong.

If all other factors are equal and the choice is between a page with a user/search friendly URL or one without then the one with the user/search friendly URL will be displayed.

Neil Patel from Search Engine Land has made several recommendations in his in depth articles about the benefits of search friendly URLs.

John Mueller has hinted that Google prefers search friendly URLs. Although what would he know, he only works at Google right ?

Mark Munroe, also writing for Search Engine Land has explained in depth why user friendly URLs will help ranking.

However people like you seem to ignore the battle hardened, experienced SEOs who all agree that search friendly URLs will help you.

There are also other technical considerations. With a non search friendly URL you are exposing the parameters to fetch the page as a GET request, which can lead to unforeseen issues should any mangling of the URL occur and then having unwanted URLs indexed.

The only reason is better User Experience. Google can see it (analytics, toolbars and course Chrome) and it makes its decision. You can't make a text blog (doesn't matter how unique its articles are) more UE friendly than a regular tube with overexposed video and non-unique descriptions. Especially if we are talking about adult. That's how Panda works :2 cents:

I am not sure what fantasy world you live in where "If all other factors are equal" ever occurs. It doesn't.

"People like you" - Go fuck yourself and all the other "battle hardened" cunts that make themselves relevant by spreading gullible bullshit to sheep like yourself. I follow proven results, not something some guy once said somewhere. You can continue to spread your cute little tips to newbies thinking you're some amazing SEO preacher on a borderline dead industry forum for all I care, enjoy the little attention you get.

SEO consulting is one of the biggest bullshit internet scams right up there with Nigerian emails. I don't know why I even post here to be honest, it truly is filled with complete fucking idiots.

I have an excuse for one site I manage. There are so many links and backlinks to the legacy URL's, I worry about losing traffic and the wait time to get re-indexed by Google if I change to a different URL structure.

Yes. I can imagine SE traffic might improve in the future with better URLs, however I hate to look at the prospect of 12 years work going down the drain if the old URL's don't get forwarded correctly due to a change over in structure.

SEO is always such a voodoo art form, it seems difficult to get a quantitative answer on the benefits of making such a huge leap.

Good post AK, and thanks for the info.

Don't mind Paul, he babbles and rambles on about whatever, often off topic, like here.

Think of him as a prettier Natalie.

Yet another good example of why Google would never penalize sites for not having pretty urls. Leave your links how they are. It won't change anything and could harm your site otherwise.

It's easy to get a ton of clicks from Google or anywhere. Buy ad space. The problem is, as people have pointed out, your sites are so disliked by surfers. They will click back the moment they land on the site.

Match.com and others advertise on TV, billboards and more. Calvin Klien set up controversial ad campaigns, people pay for product placement. Some on YT make million with video clips. Others write blogs with real information that people want. Some even set up forums where others post nonsense every day. Such as, you guys discussing how to get more traffic that won't even stay on your sites it's so 2002.

Google is making billions because it serves the customer. Many here should take a leaf out of their book.

I guess you think schema is a waste of time also.

I should have known better than to start a technical discussion on GFY. :2 cents:

Interesting thoughts :thumbsup

It doesn't and if you even read the article you linked to even your boyfriend doesn't think so:

"Google?s John Mueller recently stated that the search engine giant may add structured data markup as a ranking factor."

I like schema to help boost click thrus from Google as people would be more inclined to interact with rich data. Again, Google wants websites with content. With information. Sally who teaches people online how to make the best vegan cookies doesn't give a fuck about schema and Google knows this. Her recipes taste great. She gives clear instructions and photos. She embedded a nice video. She was personable and people return all the time. Thats why google uses surfer interactions (time on site, social shares, returns, etc) to rank her above a huge company like Acme Vegan Inc who hired 50 developers to implement every stupid little tiny bullshit waste of time thing. Listen to Paul. It's content and connecting with the surfer. That's all I am saying.

one thing you said would be good is the meta description changing for every post, but this can not be achieved as of yet unless you manually add to each post,

am i wrong? wordpress

Use a SEO plugin or custom fields or php snippet to out out title into description. Many ways to do so. Google it.

You should have a meta description that describes what's on your page.

For anyone interested in testing their structured data, this tool has recently been redesigned.

https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool

Obviously any seo-ing you do will benefit your site. Schema markup, seo friendly urls, alt tags on your images, etc etc etc.

Of course it helps. Does it give you much of a competitive advantage?

Well, if you're competing vs other paysites. Yes.

if you're competing vs all other sites: Yes, but you're still going to get crushed by other ranking factors that your competition absolutely dominates you with.

Conclusion: Should paysite owners focus on seo for their sites? It can't hurt, be sure to rank for your own brand name, your scene names and pornstar names + name of your site. With that, you're golden.

Trying to compete for other terms is like trying win a Nascar race while riding a scooter. Paysites are ill-equiped to do it.

Each page should have its own unique meta title and meta description. Most CMS' should allow you control over this.

:thumbsup

BTW you see any rankings for PornBlogs.xxx anywhere?

I agree with all of this. :thumbsup

Content is king...



Better when borrowed, costs less and still fantastic content.

http://rs635.pbsrc.com/albums/uu78/j...h=480&fit=cliphttp://rs635.pbsrc.com/albums/uu78/j...h=480&fit=clip
http://www.gifs.net/Animation11/Food.../Bean_line.gif

Gay content is the best!.... while borrowing.

Really steps up the ranking on gay tubes for some free ad money :)

Serious question to anyone who is sharing knowledge.

Why are you teaching others to do what you do for a job, so they can compete with you?

Sharing knowledge, especially technical knowledge, furthers innovation - which is good for all of us.

Also, as I stated in my original post, I am working on a search project at the moment and found it interesting so many sites were not doing very basic things to improve their search presence.

Sharing knowledge destroys the edge you have built up.

Anyone that good at SEO would be keeping it quiet and using it on his own sites. Or charging mainstream sites a lot of money to get them to the top rankings.

As for furthering innovation. What's the point if people give it away as soon as it's created?

We destroyed the recorded porn industry by giving it away.

No, it really doesn't. Because nothing posted in this thread hasn't already been posted on places like the Google Webmaster blog, SEO Roundtable, Search Engine Land etc.


One of my mainstream companies (my largest) does SEO for corporate clients, however nobody can guarantee rankings - anyone who does is not being honest. The best you can do for people is ensure they have the best chance at ranking - on page/site SEO is the place to begin.


I'm not in the pay site business anymore. Sharing my observations on how sites are leaving opportunities on the table does nothing to depreciate or take away from my business.

The sharing society was happening long before porn got online and has grown exponentially over the years. People were sharing technical knowledge at computer clubs in the 1970s, people were sharing software they had written too.

The very same language upon which this site is built is open source and contributed to - see PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor - yet PHP has been used to build forum software, tube software, Facebook and countless other things. PHP being Open Source has not stopped Facebook from being a runaway success has it ?

A walled garden isn't everything you think it is, perhaps you should leave the walled garden and explore the universe ?

Ugh...blah blah blah blah blah blah blah...blah blah blah. Blah? Blah!!!