For those of you that are looking to really improve your search engine rankings, be sure to add our adult blog hosting service to your website. You can read about the importance of blogging in our article Blogs: The Best SEO Tool for Small Businesses. In short, blogs can help you target specific keywords that you’re interested in pursuing.

In this tutorial, we’ll help you create a new custom page for your adult business. For this example, we’ll create a contact information page so that our visitors can contact us if they need assistance. We’ll also be placing the link to this contact page right after the “Home” link in our top menu (see red “X” in image below).

We’ll be creating a “Contact Us” page and placing the link to it after our “Home” link.

Follow the steps below to create your new page:

1. Login to your control panel.
2. Click on the “Content” button.
   

   Click on the "Content" button in your Control Panel.

3. Click on “Create New Page” from the “Manage Pages” screen.
4. Enter a name for your new page. This name will be used as the link for this page in our menu.
   

   Enter a name for your new page and the content that is to appear on it.

5. Use the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor (see image above) to enter content for you page. This content will appear as the body of the page when viewed. Simply input and style content as you would in any word processor. If you’re an advanced user, you can enter your own custom HTML and Javascript into this form. Simply input your code into the “code view” of the WYSIWYG editor or use the provided “Javascript/HTML” field (above).
6. Assign the page to a panel (i.e. menu). This is where you would like this page to appear. We want our page to appear in our top horizontal panel so we’ll be selecting “Header Menu” from the dropdown list.
   

   Assign page to a panel and set page order (if required)

7. Select an order for this page (see image above). Ordering applies to pages when generating a menu. You may wish to have a page appear before another in a given menu. Simply select a number relative to the other pages in the same panel (menu) to force a custom page order. Otherwise, leave this value at zero and your pages will be ordered alphabetically. Since we want our “Contact Us” link to appear after our “Home” link, we’ll be entering an order of “1″ into the “Order” field (since our homepage currently has an order of “0″ assigned to it). This will force the “Contact Us” link to appear after our “Home” link.
8. It’s highly recommended that you enter some metadata for your new page. Meta data is used by search engines and directories (among others) to determine relevance of your page for a given query. Actually, meta data isn’t the sole determining factor as there are many others involved, but meta data can be used to influence your ranking. This step is optional but it will help search engines better index your adult business. Click on the “Metadata” tab if you wish to enter some metadata for your new page. Otherwise, skip to step 12.
   

   Add some metadata to your page.

9. Enter a “Meta Title” for you page. This is simply the title of the page as it should appear to search engines and users. You can simply use the name of the page that you created in step 4 or you can create a more descriptive title for your page.
   

   Enter some metadata for your page. Enter a title, description and keywords.

10. Enter a “Meta Description” for your page (see image above). This should be a paragraph containing a description of your new page. This description may be used by search engines while displaying search results to a visitor so ensure that it properly describes your new page.
11. Use the “Meta Keywords” field to enter keywords that describe this page (see image above). Delimit keywords by a comma or space and keep this list short. Do not repeat keywords excessively as this won’t provide any additional benefit and may be seen as keyword spam. You should use keywords that actually appear within your title and page content. Truthfully, the impact of this field in major search engines is believed to be minimal. However, other smaller engines and directories may still use these keywords so be sure spend a little time on these.
12. Click “Save” to create your new page.
    

    Your newly saved page will appear under your control panel.

13. Visit your website to confirm that your new page appears as desired and in the correct place.
    

    Confirm that your new page is where it should be and looks the way it was intended.

You can create as many pages as you need and assign them to any of your panels. The WYSIWYG editor provides you with a wealth of functions to help you get your pages looking just the way you want them to. It’s imperative that you spend some time customizing your adult business to better your user’s experience and improve your search engine visibility.

Panels and pages are the main components of your website layout.

The following are definitions of each component:

Panels:

A panel is pane that can be aligned to the top, left, right or bottom sides of your page. In the image above, boxes #1-5 are all panels. Panels can contain menus, text, images, scripts or custom code. You can create any number of panels and they can be ordered relative to their alignment. Panels that have pages assigned to them will automatically generate a menu containing the names of all assigned pages (see #3). Once created, a panel will appear on all of your pages (both new and existing).

Pages:

Your website content is based on pages which convey information to your visitors. Our system will auto-generate all product and category pages for you and fill them with the appropriate content. But in addition to your product and category pages, you may wish to create custom pages for your shop that provide your visitors with important company information (i.e. contact, returns, policies, etc) or related content such as promotions. Whenever you want to add some content to your shop, you’ll likely want to create a new page.

Your visitors can find your pages by navigating menus on your website (see #3). Whenever you create a page, you will be asked to assign it to a panel. This will ensure that your page appears within an auto-generated menu in your selected panel.

Once you get your head around panels and pages, you’ll be able to create and modify shop content with ease.

What are keywords?

When a user conducts a search through a search engine, they use words or phrases to find what they are looking for. These words or phrases are what we consider keywords. For example, a user might type in “lingerie” or “sexy lingerie” when conducting their search for lingerie. The keywords here are either “lingerie” or “sexy lingerie”. Notice that a keyword can consist of more than one word so from our previous example, “sexy lingerie” is actually considered a single keyword. By targeting a keyword, you are putting your efforts into having a search engine return your website as a relevant search result for a given keyword. Selecting the right keyword(s) to target is paramount in building a successful online business.

Why is it important to target keywords?

When a search engine indexes your website, it scans your pages (among other things) for keywords in an effort to determine the topic of your website/pages. Without a strong focus on any keywords, you leave it to the search engine to decide what information on your pages is important and what isn’t. That’s why it’s so important to influence the outcome of this decision by “helping” the search engine find and pick the right keywords that describe your content. And by doing so, your turnkey adult website has a better chance of being returned as a relevant search result for the targeted keyword than one that hasn’t put in the same effort.

Before you go ahead and start stuffing your pages with keywords, it’s important to understand that you cannot rank high for every single keyword that you select. The web is huge and there are millions of sites competing for the same keywords which can make it very difficult to rank high for competitive keywords. Instead, you should focus your efforts on targeting a few keywords that are less competitive but still provide a decent amount of traffic. Not only will this make your efforts feasible, you’ll get to see results a lot quicker.

Selecting the right keywords

Okay, so you’re ready to get going but how do you select the right keywords to target for your turnkey adult website? This is going to require some research on your end to determine and there are tools and services available to help you make this decision. You can use tools like the Google Keyword Tool to determine exactly how many people actually search for a given keyword per month to find out if it’s worth targeting. The important thing to remember here is that it’s better to target a niche keyword that has fewer searches per month (but still enough to sustain a profitable business) than a keyword that has a lot of searches per month and way too much competition. The exact number of searches per month that is acceptable is something that you’ll have to determine for yourself but generally any keyword that has anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand searches per month is an ideal target. Why? Because there is less competition for these keywords and your chances of obtaining a first page ranking is much more likely than it would be for a keyword with heavy competition. Plus, a few hundred to a few thousand interested buyers to your website per month is still very appealing!

I’m going to run through an example of selecting a keyword in this post so I’ll be using our lingerie shop as a visual aid to picking out a keyword worth targeting. The obvious keywords here would be “lingerie” or “sexy lingerie” but if we look at the level of competition for these keywords it quickly becomes apparent that this would be a futile effort for a small start-up or part-time business. Instead, we need to focus on something with less competition and something that we can achieve in a much shorter period of time and with a smaller budget. So lets try a different keyword that is more specific or targeted to a niche market. We’ll begin with Google’s Keyword Tool and enter a few keywords that come to mind. The best part about this tool is that it’ll provide us with related search terms so that we can get some ideas of what people are searching for.

1. Go to the Google Keyword Tool

2. Under “Descriptive words or phrases” we’ll be adding some keywords that I’ve come up with that describe our lingerie business. I’ll be using the keywords “sexy lingerie”, “erotic lingerie”, “romantic lingerie” and “sexy adult lingerie”. Be sure to enter only one keyword/phrase per line and make sure the appropriate region that you wish to target is selected. If you’re targeting everyone, leave the region setting as-is, Google’s tool will provide global keyword results in addition to that of your selected region. Now, click on “Get keyword ideas” to have Google’s tool generate a list of related keywords along with their monthly search volume.

   

   Google Keyword Tool

3. Analyze the list of keywords returned by Google’s keyword tool. Remember, keywords with a large monthly search volume will be accompanied by fierce competition. We want to find something that still has a valuable monthly search volume for our turnkey adult website but at the same time doesn’t carry a high level of competition. When selecting a keyword, I usually target something that has 10,000 or less searches per month. I normally prefer something between 1000-10000 searches per month because getting to the top for such a keyword can prove to be much more easier and rewarding.

   Lets have a look at our results. It looks like I lucked out, two out of four of my keywords have a reasonable monthly search volume both locally and globally. Forget about “sexy lingerie” and “erotic lingerie”, based on the monthly search volume of those keywords it looks like there’s going to be way too much competition. I’m also not liking any of the other suggestions provided by Google’s tool so I’m going to pass up on those (but be sure to have a look at those when you’re conducting your own searches). So far, “romantic lingerie” and “sexy adult lingerie” look like the clear winners. I’m leaning towards “sexy adult lingerie” but lets hold off on making that decision right now as we still have a little research to do.

   

   Google Keyword Tool

4. The next thing we want to do is enter our selected keywords into Google so that we can analyze the results that are returned. We do this to ensure that our keyword is returning the results that we’re expecting (i.e. other lingerie shops or competing businesses). If it isn’t, then it’s likely that we haven’t selected a good keyword to target.

   Lets enter both of our keywords into Google separately. Remember, when entering the keyword into Google you should enclose it with quotation marks to tell Google that we’re looking for that exact term. If we don’t enclose our keyword in quotes, Google will treat each word in our keyword as a separate keyword which may skew our results.

   

   Searching for an exact match in Google

   This will also give us an idea of how many results are returned for our keyword. While this doesn’t mean that each of the websites returned is a competitor, it does show the number of results that we’ll have to overcome.

   

   Google results for exact match search

   After conducting a search for both of my keywords on Google, I’m happy with the results that I’m seeing. Both keywords are returning results for competing lingerie businesses. I’ve decided to go ahead with the keyword “sexy adult lingerie” for the purposes of this tutorial. In reality, you might decide to target both keywords or do additional research to make your final decision.

5. The next thing we want to determine is the direct competition for our selected keyword. What I mean by this is businesses considered to be actively targeting our keyword. Remember, this isn’t an exact science and others may have different views or ways of measuring direct competition so feel free to use whatever techniques you feel comfortable with. We’ll consider a website that has our keyword (verbatim) within the title tag, as an anchor (hyperlink) and somewhere within their page to be a direct competitor for the keyword. We can determine this by using Google search operators with our keyword. Enter the following line into Google for our selected keyword to determine how much direct competition we have:

   intext:”sexy adult lingerie” inanchor:”sexy adult lingerie” intitle:”sexy adult lingerie”

   From our results, we can see we have a total of 6 direct competitors for our keyword based on our definition of a direct competitor. This is excellent and I’m happy with the results. I’ve made the final decision to use “sexy adult lingerie” as the keyword that I plan to actively target.

   

From here you’ll need to select a page to which you wish to link this keyword. What I mean by this is determining which page of our website we want a visitor to be sent to when they search for our selected keyword. If you’re just starting out, this should almost always be your homepage. You’ll want to begin using your keyword in a variety of ways on your homepage and use your keyword in the form of anchor links on other pages of your website which link back to your homepage. You’ll also want to try getting links to your homepage from external websites using your keyword (backlinks). For more information on backlinks, you should view our tutorial on creating backlinks for your turnkey adult website.

Be aware that simply loading your pages with this keyword repetitively isn’t going to get you the results that you want. You need to use the keyword legitimately where applicable without it looking like keyword spam. Start off by putting the keyword in the title and meta tags of your homepage. Place it in a few location on your homepage as well and try linking back to your homepage using your keyword from other pages contained within your website. After that, start your work on creating backlinks. Most importantly, be patient because SEO is a slow process which takes time. If you create too many backlinks in too short a period of time, you’ll likely end up getting penalized for it by the major search engines. If done correctly, you can expect to see some results for your turnkey adult website within the first 3-4 months.

Note: This post is specific to Google but much of your efforts here will effect all other major search engines.

Follow the steps below to change the look of your website:

1. Sign in to your admin control panel
2. Click on “Settings” from the top menu
3. Click on “Change Theme” from the left menu
4. Preview a theme by clicking on the image or select it by checking the radio button below
5. Apply the theme by clicking the “Change Theme” button at the bottom of the page
6. Visit your website and refresh the page to view your new look!

Change the look of your website

For those of you that aren’t afraid of a little coding, you can further customize the look of your website directly via your admin control panel using our built-in file manager. With our flexible and customizable templates, you can achieve just about any look you want for your website. The file manager is a feature for advanced users and will be covered in another post. You can also contact us for a quote on a custom look for your website if you wish to go beyond the standard templates.

What is Google Analytics?

Straight from the Analytics website:

Google Analytics is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features now let you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. With Google Analytics, you’re more prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites.

Why is it important to integrate Google Analytics with your website?

Google Analytics can provide you with detailed information about visitors to your turnkey adult website. Everything from where they’re coming from, how they found your website to what type of software they’re using is logged and available for analysis. This is important because it can help you understand which of your advertising efforts are paying off so that you can focus your energy on the appropriate methods for your business. It also happens to be completely free of charge!

Your turnkey adult website integrates seamlessly with Google Analytics. Simply follow the directions in this post to setup a Google Analytics account and integrate it with your website.

Creating a Google Analytics Account:

1. Go to http://www.google.com/analytics/.

2. Click on the “Sign Up Now” link.

   

   Sign Up for Google Analytics

3. If you already have a Google account, enter your login details here (and skip to step #7) or click “Sign Up Now” to create your Google account.

   

   Create a Google Account

4. Enter the required information into the “Create an Account” screen. It’s up to you if you wish to enable the Web History feature. I leave it disabled for privacy concerns since disabling it doesn’t affect your Analytics data. Review their terms of service and click on the “I accept. Create my Account” button.

   

   Create a Google Account

5. If everything went well, you should receive the page shown below. You’ll need to login to your email account to verify your email address with Google. Look for an email titled “Google Email Verification” and click on the verification link enclosed.

   

   Google Account Created

6. Your email address should now be verified and your account activated. Click on the “click here to manage your account profile” link to access your account profile.

   

   Verify Your Email Address

7. Click on the “Analytics” link to launch Google Analytics.

   

   Launch Google Analytics

8. Click on the “Sign Up” button on the Google Analytics page to sign up for and setup your Google Analytics account.

   

   Sign Up for Google Analytics

9. Enter your website’s URL, create an account name for your website (this can be anything), enter your country and time zone and click “Continue”.

   

   Enter Your Website Details

10. Enter your contact info including first name, last name and country and push “Continue”.

    

    Enter Your Contact Information

11. Finally, review and agree to the Google Analytics terms and conditions and click “Create New Account”.

    

    Review and Accept Google Analytics Terms

12. Ignore the instructions on the “Tracking Instructions” page and simply click “Save and Finish”. Tracking code generation and implementation is handled automatically for you by our software.

    

    Ignore Instuctions for Tracking Code

13. You should now be on the Google Analytics dashboard for your account. Make note of your Web Property ID (highlighted below) as we will need to plug this into your website’s admin control panel to begin using Google Analytics with your website.

    

    Copy Your Web Property ID

14. Login to your website’s admin control panel and click “Settings” from the top menu. Under the “Google Analytics Web Property ID” heading, enter the Web Property ID that you noted in the previous step. Click the “Save” button at the bottom of the page to enable Google Analytics tracking for your website.

    

    Link Your Website With Google Analytics

Congratulations! Google Analytics is now integrated with your turnkey adult website. It may take 24 to 48 hours before you see any data in your Analytics account. Once you start seeing some activity in your Google Analytics account, be sure to spend some time playing with the various reports, features and functions to familiarize yourself with the software. Google Analytics is a powerful tool that can be used to analyze your website traffic, users and your marketing efforts.

In this post we will be taking a look at backlinks. Without question, backlinks are one of the most important aspects of SEO success. What are backlinks? It’s just a fancy word for incoming links from external websites (i.e. websites that are not owned by you) that point to your website. The idea behind backlinks is that a website with a lot of incoming links must be providing something useful and as a result should be treated as more relevant in search results. However, keep in mind that the quality of these backlinks also plays a significant role in determining your websites pagerank. The more quality backlinks that your website has, the better the possibility of your site appearing higher up in search results. And by quality backlinks we mean those coming from websites with a high pagerank and especially those coming from websites with a similar topic. But don’t completely dismiss backlinks from websites with a lower pagerank–they can still help you improve your pagerank. And in fact, in an adult business, this is more a reality since obtaining links from websites with a high pagerank can be quite difficult.

In short, backlinks are an important part of SEO for your adult business which will require time and effort to build. But rest assured that your efforts will pay off when you climb above your competitors in search results for your targeted keywords.

How do I get backlinks?

Get yourself listed in directories and other business oriented websites that deal with similar content and topics as your website. Make links with other businesses if possible and have then link to your website using one of the keywords that you’re targeting. Use social networking to create additional links. And last but not least, write articles and blog entries using keywords that you’re targeting.

You should avoid building backlinks on spam sites or sites that contain illegal content, or by using services that sell links in bulk, or by using link exchanges. These are all practices that are frowned upon by search engines and may have a negative effect on your pagerank.

To start building backlinks, you can use your favorite search engine to start looking for blogs, forums and directories in which you can start posting comments or articles. It’s best to build a list of potential backlink partners before getting started. Visit only a handful of websites per day (10-15) and post comments, articles or replies with backlinks to your website. The reason for limiting the number of backlinks that you create per day is because a lot of backlinks in a very short period of time may look a little suspicious. This could hinder your pagerank or potential pagerank if viewed as suspicious by search engines. You can also search the web for “backlink builder” tools that can help you find valid sources for building your backlinks.

When posting content, comments, articles or replies be sure to make them relevant to the topic at hand. The way in which you incorporate your backlink is up to you so use your best judgment. As previously mentioned, the safest and easiest way is to include your backlink is in a signature–if possible.

Getting your website listed in directories

It is important to get your website listed in directories with high pagerank. Two of the most important are DMOZ and Yahoo. However, depending on the content of your website, this may or may not be applicable to you. For example, an adult toy or lingerie shop are ideal candidates for inclusion into these directories while websites dealing with pornography may not be so ideal. Be sure to look for other adult oriented directories but make sure you understand the difference between a directory and a link exchange prior to doing so.

Remember, building backlinks is a time consuming process that can take months to complete but it is an invaluable tool for getting your website noticed. If you’re serious about building your turnkey adult business and making it a success, be sure to use the information in this post to your advantage. And don’t be afraid to do your own research! Just be sure to verify your info with a number of different sources before taking any steps. It’s much more difficult to undo damage done by following incorrect information than it is to prevent it.

Submit to Google:

To submit your website to Google, simply click on the link below and fill out the short submission form. Be sure to read the instructions on this page completely to avoid any submission errors.

http://www.google.com/addurl/

Submit Your Website to Google

Submit to Yahoo!

To submit your website to Yahoo, click on the link below and then click on “Submit a Website or Webpage”. Enter your website URL and click on the “Submit URL” button. You will be asked to sign into your Yahoo account. If you don’t have one, you can sign up for one here by clicking on the “Sign Up” link. Sign in to complete the submission process.

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit/

Submit Your Website To Yahoo

Submit to Bing

Click on the URL below to submit your website to Bing (formerly Live Search, Windows Live Search, and MSN Search). Complete the short submission form and click on the “Submit URL” button to submit your website. Be sure to include a trailing slash (/) when submitting your website (e.g. http://www.yourwebsite.com/) to avoid getting an error upon submission.

http://www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx

Submit Your Website to Bing

Remember, it may take a few weeks before your website appears in any of these search engines and there are no guarantees that your submission will be accepted. This is why it’s important not to rely only on search engine submissions to get your website indexed. Be sure to take these next few weeks to start building some links with other websites that are already indexed in these search engines to guarantee your inclusion.