Dating site SEO

[jakerb]

Hi guys, I'm currently building a dating site in my spare time and I've set my focus audience on single parents. I would like some advice on how I can up the amount of users that visit my site as I can code better than I can do SEO! Any advice? Thanks

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Seriously now Dating is up there with the most competitive areas on the web, it is FAR from easy. At least you are going for a niche, but even then unless you have deep pockets, you will struggle to get traction.

I would suggest you offer a fair few free memberships to populate the site, then get promoting it on social media.

If you don't know much about SEO, then it will be a full time job for 12 months or more to even scratch the surface.

Social media really is your friend on this one.

 

[SEOpie]

Onsite SEO generally follows the same process no matter what industry you're in. It's pretty straight forward and if you can get your head around it, there's a wealth of guides and strategies to follow around the net (I would link a few of the best if I could).

I think that the OldWelshGuy is right on this one, though. If you really want to get traction, you're going to have to spend a lot on advertising, especially social media, offering promotions such as free memberships and so on. Once you get to that stage, it pays to carry out testing before you jump head first into a campaign. Research ideas and spend some money on running 2 or 3 separate campaigns to see which gets a better CTR or site conversion, then test again and again!

 

[Bill1954]

Top tip go get Tins SEO course
www.FreshBananas.co.uk
Worth every penny and will save you a fortune on SEO

 

[Silky]

Uh-oh, so you'd be a competitor then (except our dating site is included as an add-on on our site).

We've got good rankings for our single parent dating site - no.1 spot at time of posting, but usually between 1-3 on Google - though a lot of this is supported by the rest of our site, which is highly targeted towards single parents and comprehensive in content.

There have been a huge number of people targetting this sector since we launched our site 6 years ago and conversions haven't really justified their investment if they're solely offering dating services. Perhaps you have something better up your sleeve?

Not that I'd want to put you off of course, cough cough...

 

[RupertGB]

I was offered $1000 a day to get a well known dating site to no 1 for "dating" on Altavista, when it was the search engine of Choice.
I turned it down for lack of confidence. As it happened I could have done it in retrospect...
Bearing in mind it was about 1999 or 2000, that might give you an idea of how chalenging it will be now.
Well done Silky

I believe It means you need to think seriously out of the box.

Competitions, anything that will give you serious traction on social, stuff that can go viral. Easy words, but few achieve it. You have to give something to get something back.. but the thing you give needs to be of value to the person you give it to, not to you.

good Luck... try offline.. Private eye ad or something

 

[mediaguy35]

Social media really is your friend on this one.

Judging the dating sector, must say no to this one. We thought of doing this ourselves (we are a medium sized publishing group), and passing traffic from our other sites would be easy, but its a mixed bag of traffic, and the competition of dating sites, we knocked it on the head as a no no - even with an in-house SEO team, ready to go traffic. and a Copywriting background, we asked the question "Can we match Plentyoffish Media" and No to that, we felt the investment too much as we had about 15k, but went with another idea instead.

Niche is the right way to do this, still, promotion will take years. You'd need the media involved to kick start it. Twitter won't scratch the surface for referrals, we've done this, so we know.

 

[Silky]

Judging the dating sector, must say no to this one. We thought of doing this ourselves (we are a medium sized publishing group), and passing traffic from our other sites would be easy, but its a mixed bag of traffic, and the competition of dating sites, we knocked it on the head as a no no - even with an in-house SEO team, ready to go traffic. and a Copywriting background, we asked the question "Can we match Plentyoffish Media" and No to that, we felt the investment too much as we had about 15k, but went with another idea instead.

Niche is the right way to do this, still, promotion will take years. You'd need the media involved to kick start it. Twitter won't scratch the surface for referrals, we've done this, so we know.

I agree with regard to Twitter and social media - people simply use Facebook to hook up together rather than sign up for a dating site usually. I disagree with regard to getting the media involved. We've never advertised our site, it's simply carried on the back of something related to the same audience so it's maximising an audience already on our site. There are quite a few sites that could probably do something similar, eg Saga have a great database simply ripe for a silver surfers dating site. Some radio stations have their own sites for very similar reasons and make a good income.

 

[ronnie7272]

I would like some advice on how I can up the amount of users that visit my site as I can code better than I can do SEO! Any advice? Thanks

Ranking in the dating sector isn't as hard as you think.

The tricky part is maximising your conversions and long term value. There is still a lot of ongoing design and coding work that needs to be done.

 

[Silky]

Ranking in the dating sector isn't as hard as you think.

The tricky part is maximising your conversions and long term value. There is still a lot of ongoing design and coding work that needs to be done.

I TOTALLY agree. There are a lot of dating sites out there that have good positions but make pennies. The trick is in gaining the (potential) customer's trust. That's why sites like Guardian Soulmates or Key103's sites do well, they have the credibility of the brand behind them already so it's a natural extension.

 

[mediaguy35]

Guardian Soulmates or Key103's sites do well, they have the credibility of the brand behind them already so it's a natural extension

More like the Guardian newspaper is owned by the group, and its 100% free exposure for the dating site, whenever they want it. I suggest the paper got them a huge boost media and traffic-wise.

 

[Silky]

I suggest the paper got them a huge boost media and traffic-wise.

Of course it does, that's my point - if the brand has credibility then the dating site is easier to market as there's an existing database that trusts the brand.

 

[neils3]

I like the niche specific idea, you may want to think about partnering up with another site that attracts the same target audience.

SEO will take time and without reviewing the competitiveness of search, the highly searched terms will a massive amount of effort to rank for.

Take a look at what your industry does and do something different to help yourself stand out.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

One thing I meant to say was that dating sites are all about traction, once you get it then WOM will kick in (as long as the experience is good).

Try to make deals with people who have a complimentary mailing list, but are not competiutors..

 

[StevePoster]

Hi guys, I'm currently building a dating site in my spare time and I've set my focus audience on single parents. I would like some advice on how I can up the amount of users that visit my site as I can code better than I can do SEO! Any advice? Thanks

It will be a long road for you and I'm not against for their advices but I think using every possible platforms are the best way to reach your targeted audience and it doesn't matter if it is Facebook, Twitter, blog sites, etc. as long it is targeted within your niche. Don't limit your resources because it's your job to serve and benefits them.

 

[InternetMarketer]

We have partnership with over 50 dating related sites; in case you need any press release or content marketing... get in touch.

 

[webgeek]

Take your strengths and leverage them, then leverage further.

Example...

Mumsnet - time management is a regular topic from 1000 perspectives, with one thing in common. How to manage their time more effectively so they actually have time for things like - dating.

If your site was a 'Time for Dating' site and you mashed up the time management software angle into the dating for single parents angle, suddenly you've got 2 reasons for them to keep paying that monthly renewal fee, instead of the one trick pony like most others.


Example...

Social media profiles and history say a lot about someone. Grab an API for social history, grab an API for sentiment/lexical analysis and a couple of hours later you've got NOT what the person says about themselves being all conservative, shy, homebody who is a vegan aerobics instructor and find that they spend more time talking about burgers and beer, in between colourful expletives than 99% of the military grunts.


Example...

You could mash up locations with dating rating and create your own composites of where and where not to go on a first date, based on actual success and failure. Places too noisy, too this or too that... Coming up with ideas for where and what is always a source of anxiety, so add a new spin to it by making it easier to decide.



Connecting men and women, or men and men or women and women is a great idea. It's a rough river to try and cross without help. Narrow that sucker down to the point it's a babbling brook or a wispy tidepool and suddenly you've made it to the other side.

UNIQUE Selling Point - if 100 competitors have it as their USP, then it isn't exactly unique!

So put your thinking cap on, think like a single parent, figure out what their challenges are in dating and help them overcome it while facilitating them connecting. Maybe their social channels are aligned by both being big fans of some obscure dog breed, or they both Foursquare on Tuesdays at V&A Museum. Sure they haven't connected the dots, yet, but you can - if your coding is up to the task

 

[mediaguy35]

I think using every possible platforms are the best way to reach your targeted audience and it doesn't matter if it is Facebook, Twitter, blog sites, etc.

The above is not marketing by segment. Think of a segment as a slice of apple eg: cut a whole apple into quarters and each quarter represents a target market. You want the market that wants to find a date, these will hopefully become members of the dating site.

You cannot hit Facebook and think this will do it alone, there's no way as the audience is huge - too huge. You need to go where people are searching for dates, and that's highly likely to be other dating sites!

Problem with niche is how to reach those users, the other dating sites will tell you to bugger off, so no help there link wise. You need to find another barrel..... way to market this, and I suggest you start with Public relations..

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Marketing is right people right message right time. As Webgeek says above, step back, look at crossover areas and exploit them. Social media is perfect for this, if you start a community that interests your group, but isn't directly about your money niche, then it can work very well.

 

[JonnyMP]

I don't know if you're going to want to hear this, but SEO for a dating site is almost useless in such a competitive market. All the big fishes of dating have the SEO factor locked up. You will want to approach other avenuese for getting traffic including Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit, whatever site you can.

 

[#ServicedOffices]

APP APP APP

People are anti-website these days.

SEO is the wrong way to go (learning the basics and doing on site SEO for the web based version cannot harm). Go on pof, okc etc. you will find out most members use their app!!! (They are awful apps.)

How do they get their traffic? Apps run as a service and annoy/harass their members as and when their profile gets viewed, rated or receive a message... (email doesn't do the same - nowhere near and people might not check it until every couple of weeks), it encourages/forces engagement. (well... interaction anyhow)

Get on Google Play etc. let people find your app on there and not on google search.

Dating apps have big competition but what industry doesn't these days?

In 2015, I know someone who is launching a dating website and app combo with a good algorithm... much better than the lame attempts at the moment, however.... the number of profiles, monthly uniques and income is another matter entirely. You need around 50k members to begin any chance of it working out.

 

[Annoying Donkey]

How did we ever get to 7 billion people without the internet...?

 

[jasonwebb71]

As many people have previously said, a new dating site really needs a huge surge of traffic very quickly in order to boost its membership. If new members come in a trickle then they'll likely do a few searches, find not many members in their locality, and not come back. Then the site ends up full of inactive members who just infuriate the new members even more, as they never reply to them.

A social site needs to have a society, and it needs it FAST! The only way you can really do that is through a big advertising push. SEO is obviously helpful, but you can't rely on it to bring the big traffic surge that you need.

Another thing you have to consider with a dating site is member privacy. This means that the majority of the site (member profiles, listings etc.) will have to be blocked from the search engines, giving you only really your main entrance page for any SEO.

I don't want to ramble on too much right now, but these are just a couple of observations I've made from running dating sites in the past. (I first started promoting an online dating site as an affiliate back in 1998!)

Regards

Jason

 

[mediaguy35]

If new members come in a trickle then they'll likely do a few searches, find not many members in their locality, and not come back

I own membership sites, got 3 right now, with a 4th being planned - got to say that attracting members is key to any success, as a dating site needs male/female profiles and at least 5000 of em to start off with. Now, it can be done and built up slowly, but will take years to get the sign-ups in! and you cant charge until you have that database and then the traffic flow to improve it and then sell on a fee to contact the memberships/email other members to possibly arrange a meet-up/date.

So the dating model is built on and relies on membership content for search and fees. Accelerating this is another huge task though, and a bit of SEO wont do it.

 

[jasonwebb71]

Good point that you raise there, Mediaguy35, about the monetisation of dating sites.

I personally never really like the idea of sites making all contact a paid feature, as it doesn't allow potential members to see how responsive the existing members are before they pay. After all, a site could contain lots of inactive people. I tend to think there should at least be a free "flirt" option so that some mutual contact can be made, encouraging a member to then pay to send an actual email.

Of course, POF offered everything for free, and instead built up, what I believe, is quite a lucrative advertising network on the site, offering Facebook style targeting of ads by demographics such as age, gender, location and more.

 

[mediaguy35]

Of course, POF offered everything for free,

Doug Richards say this is how Craigslist got success when he was advising on Accommodationforstudents.com founder William Berry see video at 13:50 secs...

The guy got 250k of student members using his site - wow, a clear example of how to do it.

and this is how we built our sites up using the totally free model for years at first, then we went paid. I say if you can offer value and something a little different, then it can work, but that niche idea is everything. Except, is another niche dating site too much of a copycat idea as far as the OP/Founder is concerned - know what I am getting at here..

I see many who do this, some may have some limited success, many fail at it.

 

[Alan]

Who are you guys talking to? The OP made his one and only posts and hasn't been back

 

[mediaguy35]

Who are you guys talking to? The OP made his one and only posts and hasn't been back

We were posting good advice.

 

[jasonwebb71]

Sorry, llocally, I was discussing aspects of this business that I thought might be of interest to other people who happen to come across this thread and have similar questions.

Mediaguy, that's an interesting clip. What Doug Richard basically confirmed there was the same as the Facebook principle - get site users there by giving them a 100% free experience, then use them as the product to sell to landlords/advertisers etc.

May be a little off topic, but, looking at accommodationforstudents today, 9 years after that clip, it doesn't seem to have come that far. Doug Richard's offer of taking it to £4 million in 2 years, might have been worth going for.

 

[mediaguy35]

AFS is 15 yrs old, got 3 million student visitors a year, I dunno about taking the offer on DD myself - after all they wanted 30% each, so that's 60% of his company he'd lose out on - that's too much surely. There was some guy on it who owned a diamond co, the deal included stock, and they wanted him to chuck in his premises too.

See the dragons think cos their on TV, they can get what they want, when other investors would only want maybe 10% equity.

 

[jasonwebb71]

See the dragons think cos their on TV, they can get what they want, when other investors would only want maybe 10% equity.

True, but I suppose it depends if you want a silent investor who's just giving you money to play with, or if you want to "buy" somebody with experience in those sectors who is more hands-on.

To be honest, I think I'd be annoyed with somebody coming in and trying to tell me what to do with my business, but, then again, the AFS guy already had an exit strategy to flip the business in a few years, so he clearly wasn't that emotionally attached to it.

 

[#ServicedOffices]

I think its important to understand the market and how to succeed.

It will always be easier to be scammish then it is to encourage new members even with free memberships to build up a user base. No one is interested in a dating site with less than 1000 regional active local members.

If you look into the history of POF you will find some really LAME press releases from Marcus. I have to point out to use terminology like the word "lame" on a business forum is the first step to ignoring everything that person says, but I have to emphasise that sending out mass press releases saying you are the #1 site etc. when you aren't is really unprofessional. Especially in the really early days when plentyoffish didn't dominate the free dating market let alone market share in the overall dating market. He put a lot of effort into pushing the website and with some underhand tactics (think basic deception, no one died) he finally got it as a success, all credit to him.

The member base? Scraped profiles from match.com and co. This is how people brought into the concept of plentyoffish - a free dating site with seemingly lots of members. People came along to join the site and over time real members displaced the starter profiles. Now you get fake profiles on there still but that is common with all dating sites. Has a strong community especially in America on their forum site.

We don't really see it here in the UK - but don't think its all established site, SEO and word of mouth... pof makes millions promoting proper dating sites and adult dating sites, but they also spend millions on TV advertising to keep people using them. If they stopped advertising, the site would stall.

Back on to SEO topic... if you can rank high for certain terms its all good, however, in addition to the need to focus more on apps (as I explained earlier) you really need to get on dating site lists and review sites.

 

[#ServicedOffices]

See the dragons think cos their on TV, they can get what they want, when other investors would only want maybe 10% equity.

Did anyone see the "Peter Jones episode"? He was a bit arrogant with the "I own Jessops" thing and thought he could buy out 'Frame Again' and give the two entrepreneurs jobs... and was a bit surprised when they declined.

I was shocked why he didn't pace it out to get an initial stake, get an agreement to offer the service at Jessops and then acquire it fully later on.

 

[jasonwebb71]

Did anyone see the "Peter Jones episode"? He was a bit arrogant with the "I own Jessops" thing and thought he could buy out 'Frame Again' and give the two entrepreneurs jobs... and was a bit surprised when they declined.

I was shocked why he didn't pace it out to get an initial stake, get an agreement to offer the service at Jessops and then acquire it fully later on.

We may be getting off topic here, but since it's interesting and useful stuff, I'll keep going with it

I think, after the original Dot.com Bubble burst, the days of angel investors giving money to start-ups and just leaving them to get on with it, without keeping an eye on them, went away.

Perhaps things got a bit loose again in the mid 2000's when the internet started picking up more steam with social media, but recent financial crises have again made investors keep a tighter leash on their investments.

I didn't see the episode of DD myself, but I agree though that to try to take over company and turn the original entrepreneurs into "employees" is doing them a bit of a dis-service.

Even in the episode posted, Theo rolled out the, "you need me more than I need you," line, to make it seem like the entrepreneur's talents were disposable or replaceable.

 

[Silky]

I don't know if you're going to want to hear this, but SEO for a dating site is almost useless in such a competitive market. All the big fishes of dating have the SEO factor locked up. You will want to approach other avenuese for getting traffic including Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit, whatever site you can.

Rubbish - we're (currently) number 1 in 'single parent dating' and a number of other related terms and we do all our own SEO.... It's taken a while to get there but it is possible if you find a good niche.