Perhaps I can share some of my background of ranking websites on search engines (particularly Google).
And yes, there is such a thing as Adult SEO, as Google and several other popular search engines do not ban these sites.
In fact, most popular search engines actually allow people to search for adult-related content (duh, the volume is super high!), but "Safe Search" filtering has to be turned off.
Adult SEO is harder than normal SEO.
And the main reason to that is most of the traditional approaches don't work. What sort of approaches?
Things like:
Link building
- You can't build links to your website as most webmasters running "normal" websites won't allow links to adult sites, especially "do-follow" links.
Guest Posting
- It's quite hard to guest post adult-related content since the content may not be relevant for most normal websites. Furthermore, if the adult website contains explicit material, most webmasters won't even put it up.
Creating social / directory profiles
- Most social media websites (and online directories) won't let you put up any adult content. Facebook for example, will ban these pages.
Paid Advertising
- You can't advertise adult sites on most popular websites like Google and Facebook.
How to rank adult sites effectively:
Find a niche and focus on it.
Ensure that your content targets a niche that is underserved. Do your research on this via Google's keyword tool.
Avoid focusing on a topic that is too broad like "vape", but instead go deep into a niche that has high enough interest like Korean fruity-flavored vapes.
Focus on long-tail
Focus on long-tail related content. An easy way to do this is to write long reviews about the adult-related content that you're promoting.
For example, if your website is related to videos, you can write a review about the videos and focus on long-tail search keywords such as actor names, birth dates, storyline details, and more.
Brand Names
Use brand names that have high search volumes. If you're into the "Vape" or "E-Cigarette" business, you could create a website like "GrapeVape" dot com.
Why? Because the terms "Grape + Vape" have a high search volume from people who are constantly searching for grape-flavored vape products.
Of course, you'll need to rank the brand to hit the first page on Google for the search terms, but it can definitely be done in a matter of months by creating lots of useful (and original) content.