In writing my last post on Google and page rank importance, I started looking for information on the Importance of page ranks and Google. And who I found was the Google Guru God, Chris Beasley. Chris is the authority on most things Google. His article - 10 Google Myths Revealed - cover the most common misconceptions in regards topage rank and what should be and shouldn’t be used for. It’s a must read, especially if you think Google uses meta tags to rank your site,  the higher your Google PageRank (PR), the higher you’ll be in the search results listing or the the Google Toolbar will list your actual page rank.

Recently, a few of my clients have asked me, “Just How Important Is Google and Page Rank? ”

Google itself is very important. It’s the world’s most popular search engine and it powers Yahoo! and AOL. Being listed is crucial for successful online marketing. But Page Rank doesn’t hold the weight one my think it does.

What Marketers & Business Owners Use Page Ranks For

Google Page Rank is said to be “for entertainment value only,” but marketers and site owners use it for a variety of things:

1. To determine the value of a site
2. To determine the trustworthiness of a site
3. To determine the safety of a website & how credible a site is compared to that of it’s competitors’ site
4. To determine how long a business has been around

Well, I don’t think it’s reliable for any of those reasons:

1. What do you define and quantify a site’s value? There is not real formula to determine this.
2. How can you determine trustworthiness from page ranks? I don’t believe a site with a with a PR6 is better get information off than a site with a PR3. If the information on the site with the lower PageRank is better, then that is were I am getting my information from.
3. Safety relates to trust. If I am looking to purchase goods and I find two sites that have that product, and Site #1 has a PR6 and Site #2 has a PR3, but Site #2 has the most security options for online transactions, I am going with Site #2 as it clearly cuts my risk of online identity theft.
4. This is irrelevant, you can’t use a website’s pagerank to determine professional reliability. I often design sites for companies that have been in business 5, 10 or even 20 years, but they haven’t had a web presence until now. So while their site may be a year old, but they themselves has a long solid history outside their web presence. Also, may old sites that have not been optimized properly or that don’t have many links to have have low page ranks.

So if you site isn’t ranking, don’t fret. Generally a new site will have a PR 0 for a few months (on average - SIX) until Google does a PR update. And remember, page rank doesn’t single-handedly determine where your site shows up in the searches it’s in. If Google “thinks” your site is about the search given, and others aren’t, you’ll move up. (Where “thinks” means, “can determine from links to your page, linguistic and text analysis, query analysis, etc”) For example, if it’s a multi-word search, and your page is the only one to have all the words, you’ll most likely show up first.

The only real benefit of a high PR is better organic search rankings, which can be achieved by a well thought out marketing strategy.

One of the most debated topics among sex workers is “Can you be a sex worker and have multiple identities? Is it ethical and right?”

My answer isn’t yes or no; I believe that having multiple identities is a sex worker’s personal choice. What’s right for one woman, is wrong for another. The better question to ask is “Why would a sex worker have/want multiple identities?” And furthermore, I think it’s important to ask, “How does a sex worker prevent them from conflicting with one another?”

As any well designed escort website, having multiple identities has to be a thought out and there has to be a reason to having more than one persona.

What are the Reasons Why Women Have Multiple Personas?

Usually, a woman who offers more than one service find that her services offered don’t mix well together went put on one website. If a she is a sensual massage provider, and she wants to offer escort services, she may have decided to create a new person with an entirely different website was the best way to differentiate massage and companion services. Why would this even be necessary? Most likely, she doesn’t want her massage clientèle to think that they could see her for companionship at her sensual services rates.

Another reason could be that she has personal issues with escorting and feels that in order to make the work worthwhile, she wants to command a much higher rate with multiple hour minimums. Thus, her regular incall sensual services aren’t compatible with her companion services, and multiple identities helps maintain the distinction between her businesses.

So then, if a provider has two different personas and websites, does she ever cross the personas?

The majority of women don’t mix their services. There are a few that choose to reveal their other identity with established, long-term clients. But once a woman begins to blur the lines between her personas with her clients, she will encounter boundary issues.

Scenarios When Multiple Personas Are Okay

• Multiple Hour Escort & Dominatrix
• Multiple Hour Escort & Sensual Services Provider
• Adult Entertainer (Pornstar/Actress) & Escort Persona

Scenarios Where Multiple Personas Aren’t Okay

• Several Escort personalities with various price ranges ($250, $400, $1000)
• Several Sensual personas
• Several Domme persona
• Any combination of personas that cause drama and fight with one another on forums
• When a woman is well-known her area and is easily identifiable.

How Does A Sex Worker Keep Personas Separate?

Well, that it’s in the marketing. If a woman offers sensual services in her home area, then she may want to focus her escort persona on seeing out of town and non-hobbyist men. The escort person will not and should not post/ advertise on message boards. She has to pay for premium advertising on a websites such as EROS or Cityvibe. Every website she has should have a completely different design, photos and marketing strategy. Another option is that her escort persona travels and she isn’t available as an escort in her local area.

If a woman offers BDSM/Fetish services and also has an escort persona, those two are also easy to distinguish because the advertising and marketing outlets are completely different.

How Does A Sex Worker Maintain Anonymity?

As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, the website of any persona should follow the model of any well-marketed, professionally designed escort website. It should have clean design, easy navigation, simple copy and have the proper search engine optimization. Why? Because it’s the first step in maintaining anonymity between personas!

• The design of website and tone of the writing should not match a woman’s main persona, it’s the first thing people look for when identifying/outing someone.
• A woman will also need different photos, even having them taken with different photographers is not out of the norm. Locations and lighting go a long way. Different photographs are another way to distinguish two personalities; each persona has their own lingerie and outfits. If a woman can pull off fake hair and wigs, that works amazingly well. If proper compartmentalization, discovery is minimal. It’s all in the marketing and presentation.
• A woman should have separate email addresses and contact information for each persona. It’s a pain in the butt cheese, but if a woman is going to go to all the work to have multiple sites, it’s one more step she has to incorporate into her business. It would be an insult to be outed by someone who was just able to Google a phone number.

How Are Women with Multiple Identities Outed?

The chances of this happening is very low if a woman keeps the identities compartmentalized well. But it’s not impossible. When a woman is outed, she usually is responsible for it. A woman fighting with her other persona in order to generate business on a board will find this strategy will only blow up in her face. Board owners & members pay attention to drama and guess what, they also log IP address and access points. The second most common way for a woman to be outed is by a hardcore hobbyists, these are not regular men who seek the services of sex workers, they live in the “hobby world” and have more reviews than most women on the board. In their free time, they crawl boards and look for Eros ad numbers/names. They then post the information.

What Does A Sex Worker Do When Multiple Identities Are Discovered?

When this happens and if it’s true, I believe a woman should OWN IT. She can say, “Yes, it is me, but you know what you see WHY I have two separate identities, there is no service overlap”. And therefore, no breach of “ethics”. If the proof isn’t conclusive, then a woman may choose to deny it. It only becomes a big deal if the provider makes it a big deal.

Is there anything else to consider in having multiple identities?

Yes, please keep in mind, that the more personas a woman has, the more time, effort and money she will have to invest in each. So plan accordingly. If it takes 16 hours ever three months to update ads, refresh website copy and add new photos, that time will double with each personality. At this point, some women have their webmasters help them maintain their sites by managing banner exchanges, reciprocal links, photo changes and even ghost writing blog entries. In an industry where time is money, it’s not a bad idea.

It’s been an amazing year for me. I never thought I would accomplish so much so quickly.

This Adult Marketing, D.I.Y. SEO blogging girl is quite proud of herself. I have finishing up my next series of eBooks on “Adult Marketing, Do It Yourself SEO and Alternative Escort Marketing Strategies” in the next month. I am also writing a short series of shorter publications on “Effective Adult Copywriting Methods & Techniques” and “Escort Branding”.

Site Additions - Book & Blog Reviews

I am adding blog & book reviews of industry and non-industry related publications websites. At the SummerMash LA, I had the pleasure of meeting Rohit Blharagava, the author of “Personality Not Included - Why Companies Los Their Authenticity & How Great Brands Get It Back.” I will be reviewing the book, but from the adult industry perspective. Should anyone want me to review a book, blog, or eBook they write or have authored, please send it to me at callie@calliesimms.net.

With the eBook launches, I am going to giving away my first book absolutely free. Just right click and save the PDF.

DOWLOAD HERE

In our staff meeting on Friday, we were talking about services to improve or expand. I was like - ummm, pimp your Mac gear. No, not literally, I meant promotional pieces like screen savers, desktop backgrounds, custom wallpapers for your iPhone and BlackBerry devices.

Promotional items are great way to keep clients returning to your site and promote your brand. Ever wonder way certain shops have amazing packaging (Tiffany’s)? Because the customer is a walking billboard, promoting their brand as they shop. It’s that can be more fiscally sound strategy that works hand-in-hand with advertising/publicity campaigns.

If you have a online store or member’s area, you can sell the custom digital calendars applications to your clients and site members

Best of all they, aren’t just for Adult website owners, Bloggers, you can have them too! Can you think of a better way to leverage your loyal subscriber base than to let them promote your blog, podcast or video channel with their PDAs! T-Shirts and coffee mugs are so Web 1.0

By designing promotional material that your customers want, you will will build customer loyalty, drive repeat traffic and increases revenue

Visit our Design Site for more information.

Blue Collar SEO is one of my favorite reads. Recently, they wrote an excellent article about hiring SEO professionals. The article is well thought out and discusses basic search engine optimization techniques that any firm should be able to discuss with a perspective client. Best of all, it highlights ethical practices by search engine marketing specialists.

It is important to “avoid a Search Engine Optimization firm that engages in unethical and illegal practices (black hat techniques) just to increase the number of visitors to your sites” and “avoid a Search Engine Optimization firm that is vague about how it is going to optimize your website.”

The same goes for any Adult Copywriting or Adult Search Engine Optimization firm, they should have nothing to hide; their processes should be transparent and marketing strategy clearly laid out. They should also provide you with a monthly updates and data analysis as part of any on going plan.

Any marketer knows that online marketing, social media and search engine optimization are constantly changing, ever evolving, tools. That is why online media specialists exist. It’s our job to stay abreast on the latest methods in online marketing and make them part of our client’s programs, while also continuing to maintain the fundamentals marketing strategies that work.

That why I’m writing my little Wordpress series, it’s not about the constantly changing factors or the continual quest of debunking the Google search engine algorithm, its about the fundamentals. The fundamentals always work, as long as they are done correctly. Wordpress and web development is no huge secret. Wordpress has the one of the best user bases ever and the fundamentals are  FREE (Click and Read People).

Six Fundamental Things You Should Know

1. XML Sitemaps - Site maps tell search engines what information on your site is crawlable content. The latest version of Wordpress does it for you automatically on your .wordpress.com blog.

2. Excerpts - What is that funky field under the post box? Well, that’s were you can put a summary of your article. Think of it like a title, a keyword rich, yet targeted sentence about what your post is all about. It displays when someone links to the post. If you don’t include it, it will be the first 55 characters of your post.

3. Validations - .Wordpress.com blogs are already SEO ready. But let’s say you have used Fantastico to install Wordpress and you have integrated 3rd party plug ins to add some nifty features like HeadSpace, Event Calendar, CurrencyX and a language translator. Well, you need to make sure the code validates or it could prevent search engines from moving through your content.

4. Alt Tags - If your site doesn’t have much content or is image based, keyword rich alt tags and image tags are essential.  They make your site more accessible and provide search engines with more searchable content. You can tell if you have them my putting your mouse over an image and seeing if a description pops up.

5. Linkage Love - Blogrolls, pings and track backs are integrated into Wordpress. Basically, if you link to it, it should like to you. And what you link to should have good page ranks and Alexa rankings too. Some sites are newer than others - like this blog itself - so do your homework and look at the content. You can see who links to you by typing in your nifty Google bar link:www.YourSite.com.

6. Site Submission - Contrary to popular belief, monthly submission services are a bit of a scam. $49-99 per month for submission? Ummm, you can do it yourself. And there are also good free services. If your blog is structured correctly, there is not need for paid, monthly services, it does it automatically with all the tools above. These services don’t help you place higher in search rankings.

Nearly half of the world’s chocolate comes from the Cote D’Ivoire in Africa. An estimated 12,000 children have been enslaved on cocoa farms in Core D’Ivoire. I will no longer buy chocolate that is not from a reliable and ethical source. Many companies make an effort to avoid slave chocolate, however the five largest manufacturers of milk-chocolate-candy (Nestle, Hersheys, Mars, Cadbury and Phillip Morris) DO NOT. They claim that they have no control over the problem. This is not true. (source - http://www.xocoatl.org/harvest.htm)

STOP Trafficking Chocolate Campaign

This morning, a press release from AVN came in, I scanned it as I sipped my sugary poison.

Paul Fisbein wrote “As DVDs have begun their decline. Adult VOD, mobile and Internet usage is increasing dramatically, and the same thing is now happening in the mainstream. Keep your eye on adult to see how the convergence of television, mobile devices and the personal computer plays out – the industry will be the weathervane.” - Press Release Here

Actually, the convergence of new media and delivery of mobile content has long begun. Look at the bloggers, the adult segment on Facebook and MySpace, Tumblr and Pownce, Twitter and Brightkite. We are already here and connecting, we are taking our concepts mainstream.  The fact is distribution and marketing have already merged with content, and the results of that development are already being monitized in the adult entertainment business.

When I decided to start Studio Erotica, I decided the most important partner I would need would be an auteur.  I hired Dan Dubelman because he is a storyteller, filmmaker, and musician who understands the culture of the internet and the convergence of marketing, content and distribution.  In an early meeting we had Dan said, “ TV and Film are follow an extremely tight structure. If the inciting incident doesn’t occur on the correct page, the script won’t work.  The characters themselves are forced to serve the structure, which means the characters cannot have real depth. Online storytelling offers a chance for the characters to drive the structure and the distribution in a sense.  Flexibility with regard to segment length is only the beginning.  You can do a series in 2-20 minutes instead of 20-60 minutes, you can release new episodes several times a day or only on the full moon.  Length and frequency are flexible and the audience accepts it.”

Studio Erotica is experimental, but our timing seems perfect. While we are collecting data that indicates amazing viral growth, we are also experimenting with transmedia where the characters push the marketing and distribution itself.

Business Wire: Press Release Here

We all know there is an ugly side to this industry, it’s not something I spend a lot of time blogging about, but I spend a lot of time following it. A few days ago, a wonderful girl (non-adult industry) who is desperately trying to be a model in Los Angeles tells me she has landed an amazing twelve day job shooting in a fantastic location and she needed me to cat sit for her. I said yes and congrats. She is only 21 and I (feeling maternal), asked her to give me a full itinerary, a copy of her ID and her passport and the numbers of emergency contacts, just in case there was an issue.

But she didn’t have it. I said to her, “No professional agency is not giving you an itinerary.” I asked her to explain the trip in greater details. And I got this:

• Oh, I only have five days to prepare, it’s last minute.
• I found it on XXXXXXX.com.
• We fly to New York on a private plane.
• We then transfer to another private plan and we are flown to <XXXXXXXX>.
• We are shooting for 12 days.
• There is no pay, just work for her portfolio.
• We are staying a private house (all the girls together).
• We then have to pay our own airfare back to the US.

I was quiet, none of this added up. I start to think, this is Los Angeles, any decent agency flies models on commercial airlines and put them up in their own rooms in hotels. Modeling is actually stressful and girls here get private rooms to decompress after shoots. She knew this! And no return airfare home?

I emailed the scenario and the post to a friend who works with trafficked victims in California because I was suspicious. She said “absolutely not.” Too many red flags. After two days, I finally convinced her not to go, I told her my extensive history of adult (and that I didn’t just design websites for people), that caught her attention. Was this gig a bad thing, maybe not. But everything I knew about screening clients and safety was screaming “NO! Don’t go, you will not be heard from again!” I don’t think I would have forgiven myself if something had happened to her. I had just imagined, she gets off the plan in New York, passport taken and that’s it.
In researching Human Trafficking as it relates to the U.S. and other areas, I was amazed to find the following information:

• It is estimated to be a $5 to $9 billion-a-year industry in the U.S.
  
• 27 million are trafficked everyday, that’s one person every 1.5 minutes.
• Globally, its $42.5 billion per year.
  

To learn more and to help prevent, please visit: StopTheTraffick.org