The internet is a hoax!

If you stumbled upon here I bet you just typed “the internet is a hoax” to a search engine. How do I know that? Because this post was created with just one thing in mind, to be found with that keyword.

Hold on! Do not hit that back button! Just give me two minutes. You won’t regret it. I promise!

People are making money on your searches

Here’s the thing. Almost everything you look for in the internet is manipulated by companies, content creators, internet marketers, website owners and the search engines themselves. When you type something in to Google, you can be sure most of the pages shown on the first page of your search results will be there because someone knew you (or someone else) would write that exact search term into Google.

So in a way the Internet is a hoax. It’s not this completely organic system where people just create content about what ever is their interest and then someone else can instantly find that information if they are looking for it, like many people seem to think. Sure, in the beginning days of the web this was normal but the internet has evolved into such a vast organism that randomly created content will never even end up to the search engines results.

You can rest assured people are competing fiercely for the first page search engine rankings as there’s money to be made. The search engines offer paid advertisement services to get your ad to the top of the search results, as you have surely noticed. So essentially all your search results end up being manipulated and are there for a reason.

These days you have to do plenty of research and quite a lot of work to get your content in front of people looking for information on the internet. The search engine giants Google, Bing and Yahoo pretty much dictate what content is even possible to be found, Google being the largest by far. The pages they show are only a fraction of all the content in the internet. That’s why companies and content creators spend a lot of time and money to find out what people are looking for on the internet.

This is called keyword research in SEO (search engine optimization) terms. Why and more importantly how someone might know you’re looking for that exact term? Let’s answer the why first.

Why keyword research is done

There are many motives for a site or content creator to target a certain keyword. Keyword rarely means a single word, but rather a complete phrase like the one in the title of this post. That’s the keyword this post is aimed to rank for in the search engines like I told you before.

The biggest motive to finding out what people are looking for in the internet is of course money. If you can rank your page or YouTube video on the first page of Google for a popular keyword, it means traffic and traffic means money. Of course there might be organizations just trying to spread their word and this might be their main motive, but the traffic is as valuable in that context.

As the amount of internet users has grown to incredible numbers (billions), keyword research is mandatory for getting your content on the map so to speak. If we take this post as an example, the internet is a hoax was a low competition keyword with decent monthly searches, that’s my only motive to use it as the main keyword for this post. My real goal with this post is to intrigue your interest in how the internet works and how you can use this information to make an income online.

I have no idea if people looking for this keyword will be interested in my post or site but it seemed like a fun topic to write about and possibly rank for in search engines. IHateWorking.net is dedicated to helping people to get out of jobs they don’t like and to take matters in to their own hands. If you’re someone interested in this kind of stuff, please read on.

How search engines choose what to show you

When the first search engines came to life somewhere in the beginning of the 90s they simply looked for the keyword in the HTML code of the site without any concern if other content within that site. People quickly learned how to leverage this in unethical ways by keyword stuffing and using black hat tactics like hiding same colored keywords in the background.

The search engines quickly evolved and started ranking the sites based on things like domain and URL relevance, page rank, back links (links pointed to your site from other URLs). This was a step to the right direction but gave old sites with better page rank an unfair advantage.

It was also possible to rank low competition keywords with exact match domains and bought back links very easily. This led to creation of site and blog networks aimed only to provide back links in exchange for money. This is something the search engines do not want to feed and fortunately they have once again evolved.

These days it’s all about content relevance. Google and other search engines have evolved to the point they can essentially understand what your content is about. Things like keyword stuffing and unnatural back link creation are frowned upon and the search engines look for things like semantic keywords related to the searched keyword. The search engines also give credit to things like social engagement and page comments as these things show the site is providing real content to real people and not just spamming the internet with marketing sites looking to make a quick buck.

How keyword research is done

Keyword research is mainly done through Googles own Keyword Planner tool or with special keyword research tools that use the data from search engines to determine certain parameters of keywords.

The Google Keyword Planner used to be more usable for marketers but these days its use is limited to running AdWord campaigns as it only shows competition in that category. That’s why you pretty much have to use a third party keyword tool.

I use a keyword research tool called Jaaxy. It’s a very sophisticated keyword research tool that uses the information gathered from the search engines to show simplified parameters, which make it super easy to determine how viable the keyword is. These parameter include the average monthly searches, the number of sites competing for that exact keyword and the general competition associated with that keyword.

There are a few simple rules to remember:

• The keyword has to make sense (content and grammar)
• Aim for low competition, the lower the better (in Jaaxy, use QSR <100)
• The keyword has to have some traffic. Not much is needed, but there is no point in writing for no one.

For a new site it extremely important to produce quality content on low competition keywords. As this content starts ranking in Google it will increase your site authority which in turn will make it possible to rank for keywords with more competition. If you want to succeed with a new site you will need to spend time with keyword research. This is the one tool you can’t really succeed without in the online world!

How you can start making money using keyword research

There are thousands of regular people, just like you and me, without prior knowledge in building websites using keyword research and focused content creation to make money online with affiliate marketing. It does take work and you are going to need guidance but it can definitely be done.

It does take real work and takes time to start producing results. If you are looking for quick ways to make money without work, this is not for you. But if you are willing to dedicate couple hours a day for months on in keep reading on.

What is so great about online affiliate marketing if it takes work like everything else? Well, you get to choose what, when and where you want to write about. That’s the kind of freedom you can’t achieve in any job.

The other great thing is it doesn’t require any real investments to get started. If you don’t own a computer you will need one as you can’t simply write enough on your smart phone or tablet. The only other thing you need is an internet connection and a hosting service for your site.

I highly suggest investing in an education and hosting platform like Wealthy Affiliate. The investment is really nothing compared to starting a brick and mortar business. You couldn’t probably cover your first months rent with the yearly costs of affiliate marketing.

The biggest thing about affiliate marketing however is the income structure. Once you create content that ranks in Google it will potentially produce residual income for years to come. So instead of getting paid once you get paid for a very long time. And meanwhile you are creating more content that will also produce residual passive income. This can result in a situation where you are banking $3000, $5000 or $10000 (YMMW, just examples) monthly on complete automation.

Conclusion

That’s pretty much how the internet works these days. I hope I gave you something to think about. This is of course the tip of the iceberg as I barely mentioned social media or YouTube which are getting bigger by the day and in the future might replace search engines as the main tool used to search information on the internet.

So what do you think? Is the internet a hoax run by con men or is the current state of things just the result of natural competition? Drop a comment below and I promise to answer any questions you might have.