This isn't my idea - it's been around for a while as a joke in the search engine space, but despite how easy and cheap it is, I'm shocked I don't see more people doing it.

It's my favorite joke to tell new people I meet, and I've re-cycled the gag for other people as well, as birthday gifts.

Years ago, a connection of mine named Aaron Orendorff pulled a little marketing stunt in Portland, Oregon with his SEO agency - he created an article that shows his face as a featured snippet when you google "most handsome man in Portland"

Aaron really knows his stuff, and I'm just a beginner in the SEO world, but I loved the idea and figured it couldn't be that hard. If you don't know anything about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) here are the absolute basics.

Google, or any other search engine, ranks websites based on how well it thinks they answer searcher's questions. If you google "how to tie a knot" it will look at the entire web for what websites might answer that best, and then show them at the top. Google primarily makes those ranking on written text inside your website.

So, if you want to rank at the top of google for certain searches, you write a lot of articles and content on your website about that certain search, and google will take your website more seriously in that specific domain.

The process of designing your website, figuring out the best articles to write, learning what users are searching for, and improving how much google likes your website is called "SEO" and it's a whole field in the world of marketing.

But NOBODY is googling "most handsome man in ______" - it's too niche - but that means there's no competition. If there is no written content on a specific topic, and you publish a website that covers that topic, google is going to think it's legit, and put it at the top.

I've made four of these types of websites now, and it's so worth the $12 bucks per year for the domain every time. It's so fun to pull out at parties as a joke - obviously nobody is going to believe you, and then you say "google it."

I live in Chicago, and it's big enough to have local rankings for different topics. I had to try a few google searches to find one that was especially content-lacking, and "most handsome man in chicago" seemed to work well.

All I did was build a very basic landing page titled "most handsome man in chicago" with a simple website builder (carrd.co), then connected it to the domain mosthandsomemaninchicago.com.

Google does look at the actual domain name you use - it plays a bit of a part in how it ranks your website - and that was all it took. After 2 days, google put it at #3 for the search, and so I told all my friends to google the phrase themselves, and click on my website in the #3 spot.

That way, google sees that people are searching the topic, and "finding their answer" on my website, so it thinks my website is best suited for the top spot.

After a few days of sending it to friends, I was in the top slot, and I milked the joke for months. But given how simple and cheap it is, I'm shocked it's not more popular.

I'll likely make a full tutorial on exactly how to do it in your hometown, or region - it's a great intersection between tech, and purely ridiculous fun.