SEO for Sex Bloggers: Keyword Tools

If you haven’t seen it in my About Me page, I do SEO for a living. If you aren’t familiar, it stands for search engine optimization, and it means I work with websites to make sure they have the best visibility in search engines like Google and Bing.

Traffic isn’t always the main purpose of a site and sometimes it can feel scuzzy to suggest that it is. But if you’re making any sort of income from your blog, you might want to know a couple of things that might help. Many sex bloggers I’ve followed for a while now seem to have a pretty good handle on at least basic SEO tactics, if not the more advanced stuff. WordPress helps with their Yoast plug-in, and a lot of SEO is pretty intuitive, honestly.

While keywords certainly aren’t the be-all-end-all for SEO, and they absolutely aren’t a silver bullet, why not at least make sure that you’re doing what you can to ensure people can find you and your writing? You can use these keywords in your post title and URL, which are some pretty strong signals to Google as to what that page is about. I’ve listed a couple tips and free tools below to help you craft the best posts you can. 

Google Keyword Planner

If you’re writing a post about how to give your partner a blowjob that will knock their socks off, you might be interested to know that more people search for “how to give a blow job” instead of “how to give blow jobs”.

That’s a pretty drastic difference in search volume! Of course, these are averages, and incredibly large ranges. Unless you’re running ads on Google, you’re not going to get specific volume numbers, but that’s okay. Keyword Planner is great for directional information. All you need is a gmail account!

While we’re talking about Google, there are a couple other ways to get keyword ideas from the search engine. Open up an incognito window and start typing something similar to the topic you have in mind in the Google search box. The auto complete suggestions will sometimes suggest common searches and can be an interesting way to branch out a little.

Similarly, completing a search and scrolling to the bottom of the first page will get you searches related to yours. In my experience, it doesn’t always pop up for adult searches, but it doesn’t take much time and it’s worth a shot.

Moz Keyword Explorer 

Now, I know I said I would list free tools, but Moz is such a staple at my day job that I had to mention it. Keyword Explorer is miles ahead of other keyword research tools so I understand why they wanted to include it in their paid package. It’s a lot more accurate than Google Keyword Planner, and offers a lot more flexibility in how you organize and sort keywords before downloading.

If you just have a couple of keywords you want to check on, or you have an endless supply of patience, everyone gets 2 free searches per day. If you want to do some heavy lifting with your research, their 30 day free trial gets you access to the whole suite, and you can cancel before your trial is up.

Answer the Public

This isn’t necessarily a keyword research tool in the sense that it gives you search volume like Google, but it’s pretty neat and I wanted to mention it. All you do is type in your topic (keep it broad: think “vibrators” or “sex positions”) and choose your country. You’ll get access to all sorts of questions that people ask about your topic, organized by the type of question. This tool is great when I’m running low on post ideas. You can refine your keyword selection once you have your topic in mind.

I know a lot of people also like Ubersuggest, but I’ve never had much success with that particular tool. Bing also has their version of a keyword planner, and you can always source keywords from your analytics if you have that set up.

A true, site wide, holistic keyword strategy takes a lot of time, and a little art and science. While you don’t need to do this for your blog, it can certainly be helpful to see how people are searching and use that knowledge to your advantage.

If you have questions about the tools, you can find me on Twitter @_aceinthehole, email (aceintheholeblog@gmail.com), or use my handy dandy contact form. Happy searching!