SEO sExperts - The Traffic Effect of Mentioning Porn in your Blog

Have you ever wondered why so many web pages, especially blogs, mention the word 'porn' even when the site has absolutely nothing to do with porn (and my site is now one of these!)?

If you don't believe me, see for yourself, the results are truly shocking...

Here's a neat little trick for you to find pages on a given site that mention a particular word. In a Google search, simply type "site:WebSiteAddress intext:Word". For example:

site:www.seomoz.org intext:porn

In the results you'll be able to see how many pages on the site mention that word and optionally choose to filter by when the page was indexed (found) by Google. It's the volume and frequency that is shocking.



In my example above, I've used SEOmoz.org - a site which is very much about search engine optimization. So why have they got over 200 pages which mention porn?

Shocking News... SEX SELLS!!!

It remains as true today in our online, connected world as it ever has. According to Sam Niccolls (referenced below) the "porn industry pulls in close to 1 billion dollars"! That's big business. When you couple that with the facts that Alexa says 4 of the top 100 sites are porn sites and Google has 100 million porn related searches monthly (yes, monthly!), it's easy to see how appearing in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for porn could have a significant effect on your traffic.

Now obviously someone searching for porn will not spend long on your technology site. What I'm saying is this - it is NOT a good way to get qualified traffic.

It is common for blog authors to include mildly risqué pictures, so that the post is optimised for users as well as for search engines. Often these images will not to be hyperlinked. This means that if you have advertising on your site, it is more likely those links will be clicked on. I recently started my experiment with Google AdSense, so I'll be able to report back on this soon.

And that's it really - sites that generate revenue from advertising, may well discuss topics loosely related to porn simply to make more money. This is something you could experiment with yourself, but be mindful of the following:

• you do not, under any circumstances, want to alienate your loyal readers
• the topic discussed should be useful and relevant to your loyal readers
• monitor the effects and alter your strategy accordingly
  

If you do that, you should be fine. Please do share your thoughts and experiences in the comments - I know I was hesitant to post about this on a site which is very much my business and livelihood.

This post was inspired by Sam Niccolls who wrote Why Michael Arrington Blogs about Porn on SEOmoz. His post is well worth a read as it provides all of the numbers behind the assumptions.