by Thu Nguyen

Created on: September 17, 2010   Last Updated: September 20, 2010

When searching for something online, what users will often find is the word or phrase is already made into a website. The link between URLs and search engine optimization (SEO) has long been a strategy used to quickly hone in a targeted audience looking for something specific. In the past, it used to be sites that are directories of searches within searches. Nowadays, they are blogs utilizing keywords to rank well in search engines.

The down side is even though the topic on these sites may be relevant, the content more or less do not answer the user’s question. Moreover, these sites tend to redirect searches into sales page funnels one after another. What then is the purpose of websites like these?

Generate Adsense Commissions

As the possibility of making money online grows, regular users like yourself and I are able to find information on just about anything pertaining to search engine ranking. What many aspiring marketers have found is that in order to get the desired attention of users online, an alternative to paying for advertising is having it become generated on a self-hosted site.

This is possible through Google’s Adsense program which pays by unique clicks. So if a phrase was searched online and that keyword is made into a website, more than likely, it will show up at the top of the search engines. Then when a user clicks through to the site, what they’ll find is it’ll look exactly like Google but a more generic version.

These sites try to game the search engines through inputting the main keyword inside the URL. This often works. However, as Google changed the way they look at the unique traffic, the opportunity through which earnings from these sites came from started to cease. Blogs then became the next culprit through which strategies like these started to take over.

Niche Blogs

There are now many blogs online filled with rewritten content that may or may not make sense to the reader. Software that ‘spins’ and generate content often leave out the human element of persuasion. So at first glance, the professional design and clean layout may fool the user into thinking there is quality content. Upon reading, it becomes evident that the articles are trying to sale you something. Until you look over the rest of the content carefully, a pattern emerges. All of these articles seem to be talking about one product.

Sites like these have links filled with affiliate products. Furthermore, theses sites are often called niche sites. With keywords surrounding the articles inside these sites, they often get organic exposure just for centering their content around certain popular phrases. Thus, the search engine would then pick up on them and send them out on searches which in turn capitalizes on relevant needs.

This is nothing new, as the link between URLs and the SEO tactics surrounding it, has been around since the beginning of marketing online. Without knowing how to utilize the keywords that are searched for, the world of making money online would not have existed. Moreover, this will continue until Google no longer becomes interested in sales and that may be never.

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