Ahrefs

Let’s talk about complete SEO coverage. You could do shit manually. I know that. However, why the fuck would you skimp out when there are so many tools out there that can automate the whole job for you? SEO optimization is a complicated job that becomes exponentially harder every single day you run your site. Content builds up, link numbers increase and eventually, things spiral out of control. So, by all means, do shit manually if you think you can handle it. But, I guarantee that you’re going to have a fucking nightmare on your hands if you do. Go with Ahrefs instead.

This software comes as a solution package, which can be integrated with your entire porn empire across as many websites as you’ve got. It basically does all the SEO work for you, on several different levels. They break it all down for you on their website, right from the main landing page. First, they optimize your site; then, they compare it to that of your competitors. Ahrefs also crawls up the asses of your competitors to figure out what they’re doing and how their marketing efforts are faring for them. This is useful information. It helps push you to the bleeding edge of search engine results pages. Beyond that, there are a few steps you can take with Ahrefs to get some unique ideas about how to improve your site. Whether it’s keywords or referrals you’re after, you’ll find the best ideas through Ahrefs.

Optimizing Your Website

There are a ton of different variables to consider when you’re auditing your own website. Suffice it to say; there’s no way to do this directly without actually using an analytical tool. If you’re on WordPress, there are a few free tools I’ve got reviewed on this site that will go through your SEO and give you the basic lowdown. I still think that a paid holistic tool like Ahrefs is better, though. The main difference between paid and free SEO tools is that the premium ones have access to some insider information as a result of a lot of data scraping across the web. That’s the bottom line here. You want to benefit from all kinds of marketing information that these companies have scrounged together for your benefit.

The audit process is simple, but thorough. It goes through every single page of your site, individually and analyzes its performance. It goes through every single link, image, script and the like to figure out where the bottlenecks are. Keep in mind; this covers both standardized practices and speed optimizations. So, you’re not just making your site faster; you’re also bringing it up to code relative to whatever the fuck Google considers “up to date” as of late. Google changes the rulebook so fucking frequently that I’ve given up on trying to keep up. I depend on third-party tools to bring me the latest information on what the official SEO rulings are and I think you should too. SEO is an invented science; it’s not exactly scientific. So, to make sure that your site is up to Google’s standards and expectations, just use Ahrefs and be done with it.

Analyzing Your Competitors

Shit gets a bit complicated when you start analyzing your competition. The initial approach is to check how much of your potential audience they’re nabbing away from you per every specific keyword. Under normal circumstances, this would be a perfectly sensible approach. You sell a product, other people offer the same product and you want to target a specific city or state. Then, you compete against them. Porn works differently, especially if you’re offering free content. First of all, the whole world is your audience. Second, porn search terms are saturated to hell and back. Even niche fetish shit comes with millions of results. On top of that, mainstream sites have taken to auto-generating content for keywords that aren’t actually relevant, but they come up first because of their high standing. It’s a nightmare out there.

So, does the competitor analysis actually help? I’m not entirely sure. I know that Ahrefs works great and does indeed analyze sites that are in direct competition with you. You can extract some valuable data here. At the very least, you can calculate how much money it’s going to take to shove yourself above them, especially if you’re considering running PPC. But, at the end of the day, the whales will keep you sunk below page one. That’s the sad state of porn webmaster practices, I’m afraid.

Content Explorer

I actually prefer this tool to the more analytical statistical bullshit, because content is key when it comes to porn. Technically, this tool specializes in written content – articles. If you were analyzing my site, it would come in handy, because I type a lot of shit. But, what if you’re in video hosting? Well, you’re shit out of luck, sort of. You could technically start a blog on your site just to get the word out and I do think that you should give it a try, but your mileage may vary.

Having a blog on your site to promote your product and bump up your SEO became standard practice over a decade ago and it still seems to be a staple today. So, for a porn webmaster, this would mean that you’d write an article about some random smut shit then link or embed a few of your videos or images within, to get people to move from the article itself to the content you’re trying to peddle. You could do this with premium content as well.

If you seriously consider running such a campaign, this content explorer tool will come in handy. You basically get an instant breakdown of all the content of your competitors around a specific keyword. All the big popular keywords will be saturated as fuck, as I mentioned. But, you could ride the line between porn and entertainment and try writing about your smut in a roundabout way. Basically, try to find some outlier keywords that get thousands of searches, but have few results. It’s hard, for sure, but there’s a lot of potential there. Plus, the content’s pretty damn cheap to produce.

Tons of Learning Materials

I’m kind of lukewarm on the learning materials at Ahrefs, but not because there’s anything wrong with its substance. I’m sure that the tons of tips and tutorials they’ve got on their site are actually helpful. They are professionals, after all. They probably know their stuff better than I do. My problem is that I know that blogs are primarily used to get traffic back to your site. I’m sure that this rings true for Ahrefs’ website as well. So, I have to ask myself: How much of their content is actually useful and how much of it is just SEO fluff for the purpose of fluff?

There’s no real way to know. Personally, I’ll take whatever resources I can get. A free blog full of tutorials is a great place to get ideas at the very least. At best, they might actually teach you some lessons you wouldn’t be able to get anywhere else. You’re not exactly here to pay for the tutorials – you want the tool. Still, it’s nice to see that they care about you actually succeeding in business. They’re not just dicking you around for the payout, I hope.

Worth A Shot

Any platform that offers complete and automatic SEO optimization is worth checking out, especially when it’s got years’ worth of legacy behind its name with a lot of positive reviews. That’s certainly the case with Ahrefs. They’re popular, they’re successful and their name is synonymous with SEO. As for whether they’re the best at what they do… well, they’re not. No-one’s the best at SEO optimization. Google makes damn sure of that. They want webmasters to be desperate and in a constant state of competition. That way, Google comes out on top, especially when it comes to their AdWords profit. The better we get at SEO, the less we need to pay for PPC. Google actively tries to discourage this.

I like to leave bad news for last, as per usual. – Ahrefs is expensive as all hell. It’s cheaper than hiring an SEO expert, but that’s about the only upside to the cost. The first tier they call the lite tier costs $990 a year, which’s with the yearly discount. The highest tier costs $10,000 a year. That’s fucking crazy.

Oh, and get this, you only get one user with the cheapest tier. On top of that, there are all kinds of limitations thrown in to encourage you to pay extra. For example, you can only analyze 175 domains per week. Why? What’s the point of this artificial limitation? Ahrefs might be great at what they do, but they’re clearly very motivated by profits.