The #1 addiction in the world

Initially, when I started this list, I emailed about my interaction with the “top SEO” in the adult industry.

Over the course, I’ve had A LOT of people asking for this email, and thought I’d run that email back again and share it with you.

So… today I bring to you my interaction with one of the top SEOs in the adult industry.

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In early 2022, I was living in Bali and working at a coworking space.

I would often see posters around the space or hear people talking about “meetups” that would happen every other week.

There were all kinds of these meet-ups. You had eCommerce, crypto, social media, web design, and the like.

So one day, while finishing up a 12+ hour day of work…

I noticed a sign on my way out: “SEO and Web Developers Meetup - This Saturday at 11am.”

Even after a 12+ hour workday (one of many), I was pretty stoked to see it. 

I hadn’t met many SEOs in my travels, aside from a few niche site operators. 

I thought to myself: “I mean… I’m starting to get a bit lonely here… I might as well.”

Loneliness is a killer when you’re solo traveling – most of the relationships you form are transient, making it very difficult to form serious bonds.

A story for another time perhaps… 

I wanted to meet new people – I saw this as a great opportunity!

So I decided to go… I wasn’t sure if there would be many people there, but I figured I’d nerd-out with a few other SEOs for an hour or so before getting on with my day. 

And it turns out…

I was right

There were only a handful of us — just 5 or 6 in total.

Nonetheless, we started talking and went around the table and introduced ourselves.

You know me, I run an agency. But the others were a blend of web designers, niche site operators, and web developers. 

We’re wrapping up intros, and out of nowhere, this guy shows up a few minutes late.

SEO isn’t the “sexiest” industry in the world – I know that. 

But funny enough, this guy was a technical SEO for adult entertainment websites.

But he wasn’t just any SEO – he was apparently THE guy for this kind of stuff in the adult industry.

The meetup was intended to be more of a networking & roundtable-type discussion, but it ended up being a Q+A with this guy – everyone had so many questions for him, unsurprisingly. 

Aside from what he shared with us, I don’t remember much about him. I do recall that he was Russian, which is why he was living in Bali at the time (visa issues).

However, I had one major takeaway from the discussion: 

Technical SEO is one of the MOST important SEO buckets in adult entertainment. 

But as I’ve mentioned dozens of times, it’s not as important in eCommerce. 

Why is that? 

A few reasons: 

The first, an estimated 30% of all global internet traffic is generated by adult entertainment sites around the world.

Yeah, that’s right – 3 out of every 10 people who open their browser visit a porn website.

That is an astronomical amount of data, specifically about 45 exabytes per month (1 exabyte = 1,000,000 terabytes) based on 2023 internet traffic data.

Y’all are some freaks. 

The second reason: according to this guy, they don’t need to spend much time building links or optimizing pages because the majority of users/viewers already know which site they’re going to visit when they open their browser. 

They basically have such a stranglehold on branded traffic that there’s very little need to optimize all of their pages or build tons of links. 

And given the volume of videos per site, the websites are essentially their own search engine. 

Rather than the DTC customer journey (search for product on Google, browse results, then buy), these users navigate directly to their preferred site, search for whatever they’re looking for, then watch. 

Okay, I promise I’m done talking about porn now. 

Back to eCommerce. 

Unless your brand name is Apple, Lululemon, Yeti, Nike, or another household name – you don’t have the luxury of people navigating directly to your website and shopping your catalog. 

They will find you on Google. 

This means that on-page & off-page SEO are extremely important to your success, whereas technical SEO is far less important. 

What’s the big takeaway here? 

SEO is not the same across industries. 

In this example, adult entertainment prioritizes technical SEO whereas eCommerce prioritizes on-page & off-page. 

Here’s another example: the way you build internal links for niche sites compared to eCommerce is drastically different.

I just spoke to an eCom founder last week who hired a niche site SEO to handle their strategy. To nobody’s surprise, the internal links were done wrong. 

He wondered why their organic traffic & blog rankings kept climbing but their organic revenue & money page rankings weren’t moving – it was because of the internal linking structure. 

Case in point: when an SEO says “it depends,” it really does. 

That’s all for today.

Until next time,

-Kai Cromwell.