XXX: Good for your brand, bad for your URL

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Friday Feature Photo: Coco Devine

Friday Feature Photo: The petite and sexy Coco Devine. She is XXX in all the good ways.

There is a lot of discussion about using .XXX as an adult alternative to .com.  AVN has a 5 part series about the ramifications of the dot xxx push. Although this discussion has taken place for the past few years, the issue is top news again because the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has a GAC (Government Advisory Committee) that is reviewing the issue before it decides the next step. The ultimate decision will determine whether “dot XXX” will be encouraged as a “dot-com” alternative for adult sites.

As it seems more likely that .XXX will be pushed, many sites have already reserved their .XXX URL.  So, the infamous www.sex.com would become www.sex.xxx. Seems like it could be sexy right? Not so fast. A .XXX TLD (top level domain) can seriously hurt your web business.

The purpose behind this is to let people know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that a website contains adult content.  This is being done under the guise of child protection.  If you are in the adult industry, you know that any site that is on the level already implements child protection. In fact, Adult Entertainment is one of the biggest supporters of child protection and actively pursues new and better ways to keep inappropriate material from children. Fact is, the people who avoid child protection are not part of the legitimate adult industry, and they will continue to avoid it.

Dot triple X will only give people a false sense of security.  Any site that chooses will still be able to use a .com domain. Larry Magdid, creator of Safekids.com, says “As an Internet safety advocate, my concern about .XXX is that it could give parents a false sense of security…It would be like setting up a red-light district in a community while also allowing adult entertainment establishments to operate in residential shopping centers.”

Many people have purchased their .XXX to ensure that they are able to hold on to their branding. The ICANN seems to be interpreting this as industry support for the TLD.  However, this is not support – this is a reaction to the very real possibility of a new TLD and people not wanting to sacrifice their brand identity because they got on the bandwagon late.

From a website owner point-of-view the .XXX is bad for your site from a technical standpoint. Yes, people can block it, but the people who would do this are not your audience anyway. You don’t care if Joe Parent blocks .XXX but you do care if Google does.  Google already prevents their search auto-fill to populate for anything that is considered questionable material. It would be an easy step to block dot .XXX from appearing in any search results.  This would substantially limit organic traffic and completely nullify any benefits from SEO.

Our Friday Feature Photo links to a site with an xxx in the URL:  www.cocodivinexxx.com. But this is fine, because it is in the site name, not in the TLD.  Having xxx in your URL will not get you blocked. Having it as your TLD is going to cause you problems and loss of traffic.

There are many potentials for blocking, from search engines to internet browsers setting their safety defaults to automatically block .XXX. It also sets the site up for being blocked from merchant account and hosting companies that don’t want to be associated with a business that is blatantly adult.  With all of that, let’s not even talk about the potential to be riddled by spam through any contact information on the site, yikes!

Overall we feel that the .XXX is a bad move for any website.


Friday Feature Photo: Coco DevineThe Friday Feature Photo is the beautiful Coco Devine.  As she says, she is the newest, sexiest, most curvaceous girl on the web.  She is definitely right. Not only is she sexy she is also a great person to tweet with.  You can see her pics, videos and even talk to her live on her website webcam. Then go and chat her up on Twitter!

Go to her website: www.cocodivinexxx.com

Talk to her on Twitter @Coco_Divinexxx

You can call her for bookings at: 888-800-8761

or email her at [email protected]

 

Google Images has Free Porn?

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Friday Feature Photo: SoCal Glamour Girl Tessie Tarrentino

Friday Feature Photo: SoCal Glamour Girl Tessie Tarrentino looking sexy and making me want that cupcake!

Have you ever gone to Google Images and searched for naked women, sex, sexy, boobs, butt, sexy women…yeah, you get the idea.  Yup, you can basically get free porn on Google. Or at least free adult images. You can prevent this, or make the free images work for your site.

Because of the way images register in search engines, there is a good chance that your adult images are being listed on Google Images. When you add pictures to your site, they are often inserted with alt tags, and descriptions, which make searching for images on your site easier. It also gives you better SEO and helps your page ranking. Those tags also ensure your placement on Google Images.

Adult images will not automatically appear in a search.  There is an automatic filter set to “Safe search moderate” that will filter out any truly adult graphics.  But you can easily change the setting and turn off any filtering.

When someone looks at the image, it is a preview that is linked to the host site. If they click “Full size image” it will often open it to a web page that only shows the photo on the page. This makes it very easy for someone to use the image on their site or download it.

Why this is good

  • Get more traffic to your site.
  • Good page ranking via images, SEO.
  • More exposure.

Why this is bad

  • People using your image without permission.
  • People taking the image without going to the site.
  • You get no money from Google Images.

Having your pictures appear in the image gallery is not necessarily the best thing, especially if you are a member-based site. You want people to pay to see your images, not get them for free through an image aggregator.

What you can do

  • Keep all your images behind a members-only wall.
  • Code your images so when people open them up, it goes to your website instead of just showing the image.
  • Watermark your image with your web address.

The best thing to do is watermark any image that appears in the free section of your site.  That way ,if they come up in Google Images, they will have your web url on the image.  This will help prevent people from using your image without your permission, and if they do, you are getting your website out in front of more people. If you are worried, best to talk to your web designer about it. Many of them have cool tricks to bypass this, or other methods they can use to direct people to your site.

The Friday Feature Photo from SoCal Glamour Girls uses the watermark method. All of their photos are branded with the site name.  Also if you try to view the images from their website with the easy, right click “view image” method. All you will get is the frame the picture is framed in on the main page.  It is a great example of creative coding to prevent image theft.


Friday Feature Photo: SoCal Glamour Girl Tessie TarrentinoFriday Feature Photo: This weeks feature photo is the very sexy Tessie Tarrantino from SoCal Glamour Girls. SoCal Glamour Girls is an online magazine and social network of sexy women. The site is beautifully put together with tantalizing content from the very first page.  But the site isnt just sexy pics, you actually get to talk to the girls.  SoCal Glamour Girls is embracing the newest trend in the adult industry and that is engagement.  The girls come online and you can talk to them via chat and web cam.  Then you can continue your conversation on Twitter, as they all have Twitter accounts.  This is a great site to both see and interact with beautiful and sexy women.

Go to their website: www.socalglamourgirls.com

Follow them on Twitter: @SCGlamourGirls

Easy SEO for Porn

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SEO LegsSEO (search engine optimization) is an extremely important tool for your website. Google made this really easy with an auto-populate feature in their search bar.  All you had to do was start typing your keyword and a menu would populate below your typing with a list of potentially related search terms. This was great for figuring out some alternate search terms for your site. However, Google black listed porn. They blocked their search box from auto-populating any terms that might lead to adult content. So if you are an adult site, you have to work a little harder to research your keywords – but not that much harder.

SEO is essentially what allows your website to be found by search engines.  Most people think that SEO is finding keywords to add to meta tags on your page.  If you understanding html coding, that does not sound like a difficult thing to incorporate. However, if you do not do coding, that seems a bit more scary.  Thankfully, meta tags are not the best way to optimize your site for SEO.  Writing your keywords into your copy is the best SEO.

Most of us think that we know what the best keywords for our site will be.  Honestly, you probably know one or two, but most likely you will not guess the rest. Before Google blackballed adult terms, we could just turn to their search box.  Now you need to access SEO and keyword applications using other methods.

The easiest (and free) tool for this is Google Adwords.  Ynot just wrote a great blog post that takes you through the steps of using Google Adwords for keyword research.  Using Adwords, you can search for terms you want to use, and it will give you a list of other potentially relevant keywords and terms. You can also ask it to evaluate your website and it will give you suggestions.

If you have a blog, a great tool for optimizing your posts is Scribe SEO. This is a subscription service, but it’s not expensive, and it does a great job optimizing every post and page on your blog site. It also helps you make sure your SERP (search engine results page) is optimized for search engine listings. It also gives you suggestions for getting backlinks.

Because Scribe SEO is a subscription service you will get more robust SEO help than from just using Adwords.  However, Adwords will still give you great results for keywords and phrases. And you can’t beat free. Once you get your list of words you just need to incorporate them into the copy on your site.

RTA – Get it? Got it? Good!

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RTA label

Recently the ASACP released their “Social Media Best Practices“. It is extremely important to keep children away from age inappropriate websites. The ASACP makes that much easier with the RTA Label.  The RTA label is a free label that identifies a site as being unsuitable for children. Not only does it identify your site, but it shows that you have done due diligence to protect children and it will help your SEO (search engine optimization) ranking.

How RTA works:

RTA means “Restricted to Adults”.  When you put the RTA label on your site you are embedding code in the header of every page that tells child protection monitoring systems that this site has adult content and it will allow the site to be automatically filtered. By alerting the plugin, your browser will not let a child go to that site.  Most browsers have safe surfing options built into their security options. There are also tool bars, plugins and widgets you can use for further security.

Why use RTA?

RTA is important to help prevent children from accessing adult sites.

RTA is also beneficial from an SEO perspective. When you use the label, you have to verify that you have properly installed it on your site.  The ASACP spiders your site to make sure that every page has the label, to prevent any accidental entry by a child.  The site is then checked to make sure that there is no content or text that would indicate child pornography or exploitation.  Once the site has been verified it will be approved.

The RTA is approval is excellent for SEO.  Getting good SEO ranking in search engines is notoriously difficult. However the ASACP has been working with the search engines to garner better search results for sites that use RTA.

Adult Entertainment supports RTA

In the adult entertainment industry we have a responsibility to make sure that our children are not exposed to inappropriate material. Adult entertainment is meant for adults over 18.  These types of images, content, videos, audio and chat rooms need to be restricted.  Parents have a responsibility to make sure that their children are surfing the net safely. But the industry also has a responsibility to make sure that we are putting up the proper safety precautions as well.

RTA is primarily funded by the adult entertainment industry.

My what a sexy font you have…

Fonts are the voice of your website.  They reveal your personality, or the personality of your site.  Your font needs to match the topic, content and feel of your site. So what is your font personality? Sexy, playful, provocative? Mysterious, classic, cold or impersonal? Mature or immature?

Fonts are the stepchildren of web design. When you create a blogsite (which I recommend over a regular website) you primarily focus on graphic design. How does it look?  Do the colors go nicely together?  Do your sidebars look cool? Does your home page grab you?  Font is usually a secondary or tertiary consideration. Often it is not even a conscious decision; people will just accept whatever the default font is.  There are people in typography who feel that your choice of font is a representation of your personality.  I wouldn’t go that far, but your font does send a message.

“Typefaces are the clothes words wear, and just as we make judgments about people by the clothes they wear, so we make judgments about the information we’re reading by the typefaces,” typography analyst Caroline Arche

Size Matters

Size does matter when it comes to fonts.  A smaller font conveys power and authority. A large font indicates immaturity. So in general smaller is better, unless it is too small to read.

Font Type

The type of font you choose sends a message.  Professional but traditional? Use Times.  Professional but contemporary? Use Verdana. Courier New says cold and unfeeling. Times New Roman is a good compromise between traditional and modern and generates feelings of trustworthiness. If you want something flirty and fun, then pick something with big circular O’s and swooping lines.

“Courier is the sensible shoes of Fonts.”

Font Color

The color of your font is extremely important, especially in relation to your background.  How many times have you gone to a page and had trouble reading the writing because of the font color?  People may have difficulties reading what you write because of vision issues,migraines, or forms of color blindness.  But if someone is struggling with reading what you wrote because they cannot see it easily, they will not stay on your page.

  • Do not place small white text on black backgrounds. It is visually very difficult to read.  The letters blur together and become indistinguishable, or seemingly move around. (This is one time where larger font size is better).
  • Red text on a yellow background is like a seizure for the eyes. It actually creates a holographic effect.
  • Blue text on green background or green on blue background should be avoided.  Often the words will just melt into the background and some people won’t be able to see them at all.

a block of white text on a black background showing how white text is hard to read

A demonstration of how white text is hard to read

The best font to use is black text on a white, light gray, light cream or light tan background.  It is the easiest to read.  Ultimately it is most important to make sure people can read what you write, then consider what your font says about your web presence personality.

Hashtags: #fonts #typeface #blog

Nice Form Baby! Too bad I can’t read your blog.

bedazzled pubic area and it spells <hr/>

Sexy HTML code: <hr/>

Form over function?  This is an essential life question.  But let’s just look at this question in relation to your blog or website.  A website is a balance between form and function. You want it to look beautiful but you want it to be usable. If you cannot read it, can’t navigate it or can’t understand it, then what is the point?

Navigation is a key issue everyone talks about.  People have to be able to move easily around your site. They have to be able to find where they are supposed to go.  Selling products? They must be able to figure out how to buy.

Ads can clutter up a page.  We have all seen sites where there are so many ads we cannot distinguish the site content from the advertising content. 10 years ago that might have worked – to get people to randomly click ads as they were trying to find their way to the content they were looking for – it doesn’t really work now.  We are all much smarter than that. Most of us know not to indiscriminately click on ads in a web page and if we see a page that is so overrun with ads as to be confusing, we just leave.

Content is King. Ultimately, once people have figured out how to move around your site without being bombarded with ads, then your ability to convert your people into readers, subscribers, followers, fans, clients, sales, customers and colleagues is the quality of your content.  It must be relevant to your topic, informative and interesting. It must be written well and checked for grammar and spelling.

If you are an adult star you might be thinking, my content is primarily video and images.  The same rules apply.  The parts of your site that include text must have good text.  The part of your site that has images must have good images.

Images. Your images must come through. They need to be sized properly for fast loading and if they link, the link must be good.  A bonus you could add would be to write good alt tags, so that screen readers can read  a good description of your image to a blind viewer.

Frequency. Quantity is almost as important as quality. If your site is based on communicating information and you update sporadically you will not build a solid audience.  You need to be regular with your updates, even if the information is pictures or video.  Set a schedule.  If people know that you update weekly, three times a week, daily, twice a day, then they are more likely to come back to see your updates (here is where quality comes into play). This will build a loyal audience which can translate into a loyal customer base.  But they have to be able to rely on you before you can rely on them.

Though form is important, function will ultimately prevail.  Your audience will stay longer and come back more often if you provide them with quality content. If your site only has a pretty face then you might get someone who comes once, but they won’t come back.  A pretty face will get people to the door; it won’t deliver the sale.