Why Free Workout Info & Guides Via Google Suck

So you want to find the best workout information and routines for free.  Typically, people, (myself included) will simply Google, "best abs workout" or "3 day workout-routine" or "military workout routine".  The information / advice / tips you get from these queries are generally worthless...In this post i hope to enlighten and help you to understand how and why crappy information dominates Google.  This will be a fairly extensive blog post but please read it, you'll feel alot smarter and be much more efficient at browsing the internet for information.  I'll also try to give you some tips specifically for getting good workout information.

Why Free Workout Info Via Google Always Sucks

In Short: The free info you get when googling subjects across any niche is usually put together by a search engine expert and not an actual guru for the topic you are hoping to learn about.  One of the main ways people make money on the internet is by simply throwing up websites with fluff content and ads on them.  They don't really work on the websites all that much. They typically spend most of their time trying to manipulate search engine results so they can get your clicks and potentially make money off of you by clicking on an advertisement.

There is Alot Of Money To Be Made From Search Traffic.

If you look at posts in this blog i have a very common advert setup called google adsense.  If you click on that ad, Google will pay me anywhere from 10 cents to 50 cents.  Adsense is one of the biggest flags of a crappy website with worthless information in the "fitness" area.  Adsense is simply the easiest way for the lay person to make money from traffic to their website.  If you end up at an Adsense website looking for a good workout-routine or supplement review or some other info, you should consider immediately bouncing and refining your search.  The info you will receive was most likely posted by a 30 year old marketing specialist who knows how to manipulate search engine results.

I am a webmaster myself and enjoy building sites and embarking on the challenge of getting them to rank in google so that visitors will get info from my work.  A large part of what i do when i build a website is tied up in technical aspects such as getting my site to rank well for generic keyword phrases that get used alot by everyday people to find good information.   A simple example of a keyword in the "fitness" niche is "workout routine".

"Workout Routines" is currently Googled about 250,000 times per month.  If I were to focus on making this blog rank #1 for "workout routines" and employed Adsense ads on it with a measly 5% click through ratio (5 clicks per 100 visits)....I would expect to make about $833 per day at $.10 per click.  More realistically however, if i ranked #1 for this term i'd be getting alot of traffic for more long-tailed terms and some clicks would be higher than $.10 per click.  I could probably expect to make about 4000 to 8000 dollars per day.

Anyways, now you can see that it can be highly profitable for a person to simply throw up a website and try to dominate a keyword and trust in that 5% click-through ratio to make a boat load of money.  The site or info doesn't have to be good, you just have to get people to it.


How Do They Manipulate Search Engine Results With Their Crappy Workout Info?

Unfortunately, the best sites on the web are often not the most visible for relevant searches.  Google is fairly simple to manipulate, especially if you have alot of money to do it.  In short, Google largely ranks sites based on the number of incoming hyperlinks they have coming from other websites.  These hyperlinks are essentially "votes" cast for their website.  In a perfect world, millions of websites and blogs would be ran by everyday people, and those everyday people would link to the best content which would cause it to be visible in search engines.  However, in reality, many sites are simply ran by 1 person who runs 300+ other websites and links them all together...and also pays other webmasters to link to his sites, causing them to look like they are popular....
*Note that Search Engine manipulation is much more complicated but this is largely how it works.

How Do I Find Good Information And Workouts?

1. Books and Magazines from Non-Steroid Users.  Workout info and routines are not very useful unless they are presented from a person who works out and diets like you plan to do.  Ask Yourself: "Who is this giving me info? Have they ever been like me? Are They Taking Roids?"
2. In search engines, try to be specific with your search queries.  Don't do a lazy broad search that webmasters have put alot of money and work into ranking at the top for.
3. When You Find a good website or at least decent one, bookmark it.  Later you may be able to find good information on a different subject from that site.  (Here is an example of googling info within a website.  Go to Google and type - site:http://www.bestworkout.me Workout Guides In Google Suck) When you do one of these you'll return relevant info from within one website.
4. Try to join a forum.  Specifically in working out and fitness, forums are one of the best resources for getting information about popular topics and workout routines.  They are also good places to ask specific questions.  The great thing about forums is that they are usually filled with like minded people who are serious enough about fitness info that they up and joined a fitness community.  Info in forums is for-the-most-part, info from everyday people like yourself.  (Forums are especially the best places to really learn about the effectiveness of supplements from real people without all the bs and sales pitches
5. YOUTUBE!  Particularly for Exercise and workout tips for specific lifts and routines, Youtube is one of the best places to start looking.  There is alot of crap on there as well, but there are also alot of users that put up some pretty quality videos that are informative and entertaining.

I could go on, but i think you can come up with some ways to find better info on workouts and fitness and supplements and such.  The main point of this blog post is to introduce you to why alot of fitness and workout info you find on the web is worthless and give you some tips on how to find better info.