Why Content Matters & Targeting A Niche

While PageRank — Google’s algorithm that measures how many links link to and from a site – was their initial primary ranking system, content has become king.

‘Panda’ became the codeword for the changes in their ranking algorithms by which they ranked sites using texts and the keywords found on individual pages. What this basically meant was that a page with lots of text that included the keywords a person was looking for would rank high in the search results. Sounds logical, but it backfired.

People would take advantage of that system and place large amounts of keywords on their sites. Someone selling used cell phones for example would put the words “used cell phones” hundreds of times on a single page, on many pages. Another popular way of cheating became scraper sites. By scraping the web, they would basically steal content and copy it, creating duplicates. Then ads would be included. These sites could be created automatically by the thousands and would mislead first the search engine and second the visitor who would then click on the ads, giving the scrapers revenue.

Google quickly grew wise to that and adjusted panda again. They now looked for complete articles and would ignore the obvious cheaters and duplicators. However, soon spun content appeared, meaning a program would develop a nonsensical article that included the keywords. Since the Google search spiders are only robots, they wouldn’t know the difference between actual articles and a spun one.

Recently Google changed their policy again, this time bringing artificial intelligence into the fold. They would use and study human test subjects while they surfed sites and ranked them by quality, trustworthiness, speed, design and so on. Panda’s learning algorithm would pick up on the similarities these test people found and could so learn to recognize spun from real articles, bad sites from good sites, low quality from high quality.

September 2012 a penguin came along. Together with a new panda update, this new Google algorithm declared war on sites violating their webmaster guidelines. Fake articles, link schemes, keyword stuffing, scraper sites and other black-hat practices are now being recognized and ignored.

Thanks to the panda and the penguin, Google now only respects sites that are legit. That means that in order to get a good ranking a site needs to have genuine information on the subject it tries to advertize. Or at the very least genuine content that contain the keywords written by real flesh-and-blood writers. The more real articles and blog posts with keywords, the higher the respect and the higher the ranking.

This has created the need for webmaster and site owners to update their sites with content. Lots of it. While it is more work and expenses for the webmasters and writers, it is a very fair arrangement for the end user.

After all, all we want to do is to type in a keyword and get a decent answer.

You already know that it is possible to make money online through Internet Marketing or promoting other people’s products, but did you know that in order to make a lot of money, you need to focus on specific niches?

What is a niche?

It is really a small corner of a bigger topic. For example, when it comes to online dating or finding love online, there are several niches. We all know that people are constantly looking for love online. However, different people are looking for different kinds of love. While some people are looking for fast love, there are people who are looking for marriage. And then there are people who are looking for people who have the same interests as they do.

You’d be surprised that within the dating niche, there are many, many sub-niches like plus-size dating, dating for military singles, single parents, etc. Thus, if you really want to make money online, narrow your target to an even more specific niche.

Any niche that you can think of will always have a sub-niche or sub-niches that you can earn money from. For example, in the weight loss niche, sub-niches include weight loss supplements, exercise videos for losing weight, mind control for weight loss, etc.

The important thing to remember is that different people want to solve their problems differently. In the case of the sub-niches in the weight loss niche, there are people who want an easy way so they prefer supplements. Others, meanwhile, want to stretch themselves by using their minds to lose weight.

If you’re just starting out, it will help if you start with what you know and dig for sub-niches there.

However, we need to tell you that not all sub-niches are created alike and there are sub-niches that are more profitable than others. Your niche may or may not be profitable, however, the important thing to do is to get started and not procrastinate. If you find that you’re not earning as much as you should in your chosen niche, either you’re targeting the wrong people in the buying cycle or your niche is not that profitable at all.

One way to check if a niche is profitable is by searching on Google for any relevant keyword. If there are people who are advertising on Google for some related product, you can be sure that people are making from it. So, go ahead and work on your niche. Don’t be afraid of competition because it’s an indicator of how profitable your niche is.

If you’re not sure how to get started in Internet Marketing, the best way to go about it is by building a website.

Although you can build a website for free on Blogger.com or WordPress, we don’t recommend it because the websites that you build there aren’t your property, and there’s no telling if these sites are going to shut down your website for some real or imagined violation of their Terms of Service. Besides, it doesn’t cost much to build a website. A domain costs only $10 per year while a hosting account costs less than $15 per month.