Glossary
Adult marketing and SEO terms, in plain English
36 terms you will meet on advertising platforms, in conversations about SEO and in our guides — each defined in a sentence or two, with a link to the page that goes deeper.
Working terms
Incall
An incall is an appointment at the provider’s own premises — her flat, a studio or a rented room. For marketing, the incall location decides which neighbourhoods a website should target with local pages.
More: City pages
Outcall
An outcall is an appointment where the provider travels to the client, usually a hotel or home. Outcall searches name the destination (“outcall Canary Wharf”), so a website lists the areas covered rather than an address.
More: City pages
Tour
A tour is a short working trip to another city. Tour dates belong on the website and in ad headlines in advance, so that local clients can find them before the provider arrives.
More: Website design
Independent provider
An independent provider is an escort, masseuse or creator who works for herself rather than through an agency: she sets her own rates, keeps all of her earnings and arranges her own marketing.
More: About Boost18+
Agency commission
Agency commission is the share of each booking that an escort agency keeps in exchange for finding clients. A marketing agency works differently: Boost18+ charges a fixed fee for the work and takes no share of earnings.
More: Prices
Platforms and social media
Classified ad platform
A classified ad platform is a website where providers pay to publish an ad among many others. In the UK the main ones for this industry are Vivastreet, AdultWork, Gumtree and Skokka.
Niche directory
A niche directory lists businesses in one field only — MassageHub.uk, for example, covers massage in the UK. A complete profile brings visitors directly and usually includes a link back to the provider’s own website.
More: MassageHub.uk review
Bump
A bump is a paid action that moves an ad back to the top of its category on a classified platform. Timing matters: a bump is worth most when clients are actually browsing, which is usually in the evening.
More: Platform listings
Verification
Verification is a platform’s check that the person in the photos is the person running the profile. A verified profile displays a trust badge that clients look for.
More: Platform listings
Shadowban
A shadowban is when a social platform quietly limits how many people see an account without telling its owner. Nothing appears to be blocked, yet reach and new followers drop.
More: Instagram without bans
Link-in-bio page
A link-in-bio page is a simple page linked from a social profile that sends followers on to a website, a booking channel or OnlyFans. It keeps the profile itself inside the platform’s rules.
More: Social media
PPV (pay-per-view)
PPV is content on OnlyFans that is sold separately from the monthly subscription — usually sent by direct message with a price to unlock it.
More: OnlyFans
Faceless account
A faceless account is a profile or gallery that never shows the face or identifying features such as tattoos. It is achieved with framing, cropping and editing.
Search and SEO
SEO (search engine optimisation)
SEO is the work of making a website appear higher in Google’s unpaid results. It covers three things: the site’s technical structure, the content of its pages and links from other websites.
More: Adult SEO service
Adult SEO
Adult SEO is search engine optimisation for adult businesses such as escort and erotic massage websites. Google ranks these sites but does not sell them ads, so organic ranking is the only route to page one.
More: Adult SEO in London
Local SEO
Local SEO targets searches that include a place — “massage in Paddington”, “escort Leeds”, “near me” — rather than national terms. For an independent provider these are the searches that turn into enquiries.
More: Cities we work in
Long-tail keyword
A long-tail keyword is a longer, more specific search phrase. Each one is searched less often, but together they bring visitors who know exactly what they want, and they are easier to rank for.
More: Adult SEO service
Organic traffic
Organic traffic is the visitors who arrive from unpaid search results, as opposed to ads. It costs nothing per click and does not stop when an advertising budget runs out.
SERP
SERP stands for search engine results page: everything Google shows for a query, including the map results, the ordinary links and any extra answer boxes.
More: Adult SEO service
Map pack
The map pack is the block of three local businesses with a map that Google shows above the ordinary results for local searches such as “massage near me”.
Google Business Profile
A Google Business Profile is the free Google listing that puts a business on Maps and in the map pack. It is a workable route for massage businesses; Google’s policies do not permit profiles for escort services.
Service-area business
A service-area business is a Google Business Profile setting for businesses that work by appointment or travel to clients. The profile shows the areas covered instead of a street address.
Indexing
Indexing is Google adding a page to its database after crawling it. A page that has not been indexed cannot appear in search results at all, whatever its quality.
More: Adult SEO service
Schema markup
Schema markup is structured data added to a page’s code that tells search engines what the content is — a service, a price, a question and its answer — so they can display it accurately.
More: Website design
Links and authority
Backlink
A backlink is a link from another website to yours. Google treats each one as a vote of confidence, so pages with good backlinks rank above pages without them.
Link building
Link building is the work of earning backlinks: complete directory profiles, guest articles on relevant sites, mentions in the press and content worth citing.
More: Link building service
Domain Rating (DR)
Domain Rating is a 0–100 score from the SEO tool Ahrefs that estimates a website’s authority from the quantity and quality of links pointing to it. A new provider website starts at around DR 0–3.
Anchor text
Anchor text is the clickable wording of a link. Google reads it as a hint about the page being linked to; the same keyword-heavy anchor repeated on every link looks manipulative.
More: Link building service
Nofollow and sponsored links
A nofollow or sponsored link carries a marker telling Google not to pass ranking credit through it. Google’s guidelines ask for paid placements to be marked rel="sponsored".
More: Link building service
Link farm (PBN)
A link farm, or private blog network, is a group of low-quality websites that exist only to sell links. Google detects the pattern and either ignores the links or penalises the sites that bought them.
More: Link building service
Citation
A citation is a mention of a business’s name, area and website in an online directory. Citations that match one another exactly reinforce each other as a local trust signal.
More: Link building service
Privacy
WHOIS privacy
WHOIS privacy is a registrar service that keeps a domain owner’s name and address out of the public WHOIS record, so a website cannot be traced to a person through its domain.
EXIF metadata
EXIF metadata is hidden data stored inside a photo file: the device, the date and sometimes the GPS location where it was taken. It should be stripped before a photo is published.
Watermark
A watermark is a name or logo placed over an image so that it cannot be reused on someone else’s profile without the mark showing.
More: Photoshoot and content
Geo-blocking
Geo-blocking hides a website from visitors in chosen countries — typically the provider’s home country — so that people there cannot open it.
More: Website design
Age gate
An age gate is a screen that asks visitors to confirm they are over 18 before an adult website is shown.
More: Website design
Missing a term, or something still unclear? Ask us — we will explain it without the jargon. Longer explanations live in the Playbook.