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There are basically two forms of widely used marketing strategies in the adult world: quantitative marketing and qualitative marketing. The philosophies of each style are diametrically opposed: one favors bulk processing and the mob concept of “power in numbers,” while the other relies on fewer, yet stronger pillars of support.

Although the differences between the two can be seen in many facets of the adult web, this article concentrates on the search engines and directories. A search engine is spider-powered, using powerful programs with complex algorithms to transverse, catalogue, and arbitrarily rank the web. Example spider engines are Altavista, Google, Inktomi, and FAST. A directory is human-compiled to some degree, either by volunteers such as those at the Open Directory Project (the DMOZ directory feeds into Netscape, Hotbot, and a score of other sites) or by paid staff at Looksmart or Yahoo.

Quantitative marketers usually create a large number of relatively garbage-filled pages, so directory rankings are improbable if not impossible. However, the spider-engines are well suited to cataloging and displaying the huge number of pages these webmasters create. Qualitative marketers monopolize the top rankings at directories and (usually) traditional search engines, but the smaller number of sites qualitative marketers develop prevents them from having a large number of these spots. Neither method is necessarily better than the other, and most webmasters follow both schemes to varying degrees.

Quantitative Marketing

Quantitative marketers systematically attack thumbnail gallery posts, pic posts, and non-adult search engines for traffic. A Webmaster who bulk processes and posts a huge number of doorway pages at every spider engine he can find follows this marketing method. If doorway pages are spread over multiple domains, the Webmaster can often, to some degree, monopolize scores of less competitive yet profitable rankings at the search engines. Essentially, 1,000 halfway decent rankings for every sex-related keyword at each engine can bring in far more traffic than a highly exclusive top 10 spot for a single word.

Unfortunately, on-page criteria is no longer the most important part of a page ranking. The spider search engines are relying increasingly on off-page criteria such as site depth and link popularity to determine rankings. A complex network of a large number of pages linked to one another grants the site a higher overall ranking for all of its keywords. This can be an advantage for the quantitative marketer who has targeted hundreds or thousands of different keywords with different doorway pages, especially if they link to one another (to allow the spiders to crawl through the entire site and improve link popularity for each page).

Link Popularity

Link popularity is a tough scheme for the quantitative Webmaster to beat. Usually high-quality, well-maintained supersites are the ones with an unreal 12,000 links to them, so they show up in the top spots for the best sex-related keywords. However, the quantitative Webmaster can bump himself over much of the massive hoard of adult pages by improving his own link popularity. If he owns multiple domains, the quantitative Webmaster can create a network of links pages that increment the link popularity of some or all of his doorway and/or index.html pages.

However, this can be a particularly tedious process because the search engines don't like giant pages with nothing but links on them. In fact, if you're going to make large link lists to speed spider-crawling and improve link popularity, you need to make the links pages real pages, too. At the very least, tack the list onto a former doorway page so that there is some sort of substance to the page itself. Most engines take into account the popularity of the page providing the link; so make sure that your links pages are linked to, as well.

Getting a link popularity of 20 or 30 (from individual domains) can often make a huge difference in search engine rankings. I remember one of my own pages was ranked somewhere in the 800s at the Google engine, and after improving the link popularity to 30, the same page flew to the top 100. It isn't great, but when there are thirty pages spread over the top 150 listings for every sex-related keyword, you're going to get some good traffic!

Rather than having a huge number of "garbage" pages, supersites often have a huge repository of quality materials.

Qualitative Marketing

The biggest and best adult sites are the result of hard work, constant updates, and aggressive marketing. The ones that are successful are listed at every applicable directory, such as Yahoo, so there is a source of traffic available to them that is usually unavailable to quantitative marketers. Besides this, large and successful sites often have a huge link popularity and/or page presence. For example, Persiankitty.com, Altavista's number one site for “sex,” has a link popularity at that engine of nearly 11,000 different domains (Note: This figure is more than 21,000 as of June 2002). It barely matters what the meta tags say, or what the keyword concentration is in the index.html page – in this regard, the qualititative marketer may even be better off, especially for ultra-competitive keyword phrases. What does matter is that that everyone and his mother are linking to the site.

Although both quantitative and qualitative Webmasters have the ability to create a large number of pages, the qualitative marketers go about it differently than the bulk “plug-n-chug” methods of the quantitative folks. Rather than having a huge number of “garbage” pages, supersites often have a huge repository of quality materials. Not only do these individual items hold directory and search engine rankings, but the power of the site causes it to leapfrog other, less impressive sites. For example, the number one site for “sex” at Google, salonmag.com, has more than 32,000 different pages on its domain while it “only” sports a link popularity of just over 1,000 (Note: This figure has increased to 33,000 as of June 2002).

Conclusion

For those webmasters pursuing projects qualitative in nature, we all wish you good luck on the (hopefully rewarding) road of creating and marketing a supersite. As for the quantitative marketer, programming can be your secret weapon. You may want to consider utilizing the search engine optimization products we offer at www.adultwebmasterconsultants.com - it may be the final nail in the money box you bury in your backyard!

This article was meant only as a primer. You can find additional information regarding Internet marketing at adult resources such as The Adult Webmaster, Porn Resource, NetPond, and of course, right here at Webmaster Joint. Of course, we'd love to hear your comments about this article, and please let us know if you have any questions!

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