I recently took a foray into the Adult Industry for a local business in London and this vertical for Local SEO is beyond crazy, its totally insane.
Before you switch to reading in incognito, this business is a registered Ltd company with accounts and VAT up to date (I did my moral diligence) and it has a category in Google My Business.
The Local SEO Part
Location Pages
This industry loves to create location pages, nothing wrong with that but in order to make location pages work for your business, its all about structure, structure, structure and of course some great content.
Now unlike traditional businesses content for location pages is actually quite easy to make unique location pages for the adult industry because of the unique attributes of the employees serving those areas.
Google My Business
Yes this particular adult business does have a category within Google My Business.
Like other sensitive businesses these do not have product available to them, however switching your primary category to the top level entity and your adult category as secondary enables the profile to use products.
Too Much Skin in Posts …
So there have been a lot of reports about “too much skin on display” being one of the reasons for rejected Google Posts. I have experienced this with a vascular surgeons posts when displaying his work on patients legs.
But not in this business, so what’s going on here?
Could it be these are totally unique to the business and not found online or in any image index?
Its not just posts, product pages too.
Service Areas
Refine and keep your service areas tight, service areas should ideally match your location pages on site.
Tightening these up creates better visibility in your main areas.
** There were two suspension in the above time comparison.
Reviews
The response rate to leaving a review is a pitiful 1.4%, not too surprising really.
Almost all do not use their correct name, again not surprising.
Taking this businesses response rate, looking at competitors numbers of reviews and the number of their employees listed, shows that businesses in this vertical have a staggering amount of fake reviews.
Thumb suck calculation puts this vertical in the 80% fake review realm.
Content
Wow, just wow the content created by these businesses is pure smut, but why?
Adult content writers are a dime a dozen, but finding one that can write content without ending up as smut is another story. It took almost two months to find a writer that could articulate the adult nature without resorting to smut.
Currently working through updating old smut and creating new content that users will read, enjoy and intersect them in their purchasing research.
The Crazy Part
Now I have worked in some very competitive industries (still do); personal training, taxis, home furnishing, lettings etc. but boy oh boy, I was in for a steep learning curve.
Regular Suspensions
If you are getting into the adult vertical prepare for suspensions, 2 – 3 a month seem to be the norm at the moment.
The format at the moment seems to be malicious suggest edits.
User makes a tiny suggest edit, like a letter in name which is almost instantly approved, then they hit it with (Close or Remove) Does not Exist, Spam, Permanently Closed etc.
Oh and don’t forget changing the opening date to a date in the future disappears the business profile too.
Negative SEO
I work with a lot of sites that have an unnaturally large amount of spam links (intentional & unintentional) but I have never really felt the need to disavow.
Remember all those reinstatement we made during penguin, not to mention all those disavow files submitted over the past nine years to Google, well they have a pretty good handle on what to ignore.
Except in this instance, the sheer volume of monthly spam links being generated is scary. I have held off for the moment from using disavow, but I am almost ready to hit that submit button.
Negative NAP
If sending a monumental amount of spam links to the site was not enough, the new flavour of the month seems to be creating false business citations. The reason we got wind of this was human awareness in some of the main aggregators called us up and asked if we had changed address.
Yes people are submitting fake citations – Correct Name, Different Addresses, Same Tel Number, Internal Page Link.
They are certainly rattled by this businesses new found visibility and are throwing everything at it.
Spam Reporting
For new clients in a competitive market I typically create a spam report at the beginning of a consult and then review and update quarterly.
Well personal injury attorney’s, step aside, I have found the mother load of spam in this industry.
I am currently updating and resubmitting on a monthly basis.
The Surprising Part
Well this industry is full of surprises!
High Income Customers
Perhaps naively, I thought this was a middle of the road type range of customers, oh how wrong I was.
Customers are high income, especially when the average customer pays more then my monthly mortgage, its eye watering.
60 / 40 Split in Customers
Well ladies you have certainly surprised me, I had no idea how many of you use these services.
Men don’t typically make requests.
Women, holy moly, were are you getting these ideas from.
Women don’t leave reviews, even after all those rather eye popping requests.
Professional Customers
The high income part probably gives the game away here, but the large majority of customers are professionals.
All I am going to say here is, the next time you see your doctor, dentist or surgeon, ask them to double glove and make damn sure your lawyer and accountant washes their hands.
Our local SEO consultants love a challenge, if you have business that you can’t seem to get moving, give us a call at Online Ownership for a no obligation chat.