I'm a writer. I'm biased. I like words.

Calm down. This article isn't one of my invectives against the shamefully low value placed on the work done by authors in the adult Internet industry. This article is about the words themselves. This article is an homage to the power of text on the web.

"For many of you, text is an afterthought, on a level of importance far below imagery, design, hosting, billers and sponsors."

Most adult webmasters deal in visual content. Pictures. Video. Webcam feeds. These are the products we sell on the web. There's no discounting the importance of imagery to our business. Content is King. Without visual porn content, most of us would have nothing to sell. Expectedly, the majority of adult webmasters devote much of their energy to the procurement and display of visual smut. For many of you, text is an afterthought, on a level of importance far below imagery, design, hosting, billers and sponsors.

We insert text into our sites as an addendum, sort of like object d'art. We build our sites around images and design minutia and when it's all done, we shove some text in there to make the page look "lived in". This is fine. As I said already, porn is a visual medium. An adult site should appeal to the eyes of its surfers. Text should be on a page for the purposes of description, entertainment and information. Just the same, text is a more powerful tool than you might realize.

Hidden Power

Probably the most important text to use is the text your surfers will never see. The text you place into a specific portion of your HTML document may not show up in a user's browser but will be read by search engine robots and indexed by spiders. The text you include in your META tags determines whether or not surfers will find your page amongst the hundreds of thousands of adult sites on the World Wide Web. Search engines read the text within your META tags and list your page accordingly. If your META tags are composed properly, then those who type the right words in an SE will find you. If you compose your META tags badly, they won't.

The biggest mistake most adult webmasters make when composing META tags is one of overkill. These webmasters believe they have to insert every sexually-related keyword in the language into a META tag. You've probably seen such textual waste before.

For example, the word "sex" is still the most-used keyword on the web. However, this doesn't mean that incorporating the word "sex" into your META tags will bring more visitors to your adult site. When people look for porn through a search engine, they very rarely type the singular word "sex" into the search box.

Surfers are looking for specific types of sex on the Internet. Mature sex, bondage sex, taboo sex, these are the phrases that porn surfers actually use. If you use non-specific words and phrases in your META tags then you're just wasting tag space. If your interracial site contains keywords like: sex, xxx, porn, fucking, pictures, hardcore, then how do you expect to attract interracial porn lovers through the search engines? Your META tag keywords have to relevant to your content.

The words/phrases you use in your META tags are hidden to your surfers but still derive great power through search engines. Compose your META tags wisely and never lose sight of your target audience.

Seeable Power

The visible text on your adult page has power as well.

First off, most search engines look deeper into your site than just at the META tags. Some SE robots will search through every single bit of text on your adult web. Some will only look through the first few sentences. Either way, the text you place in the BODY of your HTML page plays an important part in determining how high your site is listed in search results.

When you add BODY text containing keywords and phrases relative to your content, then your site is more likely to appear in first-page SE results. In other words, when you add text to the BODY of your adult page that text should include some of the keywords and phrases a surfer might use to find your site. An example would be an opening sentence for a shoe fetishist's page: "If you love high heels, stilettos, sandals and the feet they hold, then you've come to the right place!"

As you can see, that one sentence contains at least four keywords/search terms a surfer might use to find a shoe fetish page through a search engine. When you write BODY text for your site you want to make it salable but you also want that text to include relevant keywords and search terms.

In addition, it's wise to add alternate text to your image tags, especially those images that are design-related. Don't let your logo graphic sit there at the top of your page without some "alt" text within the image tag. Put the name of your site into the "alt" tag of your logo image or better yet, add a keyword-heavy description. That way when a search engine spider crawls through your BODY tags, it will find relevant words right off the bat.

Internet porn is principally a visual medium. Those with the best visuals are ahead of the game. Yet all the great imagery in the world won't help your success if surfers can't find your page. The best way to attract interested customers to your page is through the search engines. Search engines determine site relevance by examining the text on your page. Use text effectively and surfers will find you. Content may be king but text, is your trump card.