SEO Marketing is the simplest way to drive relevant traffic to your website. If you write about baking cookies, you want people searching for cookie recipes to find you. You aren’t so interested in having automobile afficionadoes stopping by. And once those cookie bakers show up, you want Google AdSense or another content based ad program (like Chitika) to have the appropriate ads running that you know they’ll want to click on. Baking supplies. Gourmet recipes. Cookie delivery services for Easter or Christmas.

So how does it work?

Concentrated content. If you want to attrack those cookie bakers, you need to have a proliferation of the right keywords. Cookie recipes. Easy cookie recipes. Bake cookies. These are great keywords to attract the right kind of people. And the concentration within your website or blog should be a minimum of 3%. The more those keywords are mentioned, the more they will be scanned and recognized by Google and other search engines as relevant. When someone searches for those words, Google will know to put your site near the top of the listings. And if you have AdSense embedded in your site, relevant ads will appear for your readers.

I’ll be the first to admit that there isn’t as much money out there as there used to be. But that’s because there are more people on the web today than there were even five years ago. There’s a level of saturation in most niches that there wasn’t a few years ago. But that doesn’t mean that SEO isn’t important or a good way to generate page views and revenue.

There was a time not so long ago that savvy website owners could use SEO marketing and AdSense as a main source of income. Huge blogs and sites still can, but for the rest of us, it’s really just a great trickle of additional revenue. I don’t depend on it to pay the rent, but I sure didn’t scoff at the Google check I received last Thursday.

If your website caters to a niche – celebrity gossip, cooking, pet care – then you can include SEO marketing without sacrificing the quality of your content.

This website is about freelance writing, self-publishing and making money by writing for the web. Notice that most of the Google ads that appear are relevant to my topic. And you, my readers, are clicking on those ads. Which means I’m doing something right.

Try it on your site and drop me a comment after a couple of months to let me know how it’s going.

Google – like God – is all-powerful and more than a little scary to us mortals. (If Al Gore commanded that kind of respect, maybe we’d believe him.)

I’ve mentioned the basics of SEO Marketing in the past, and these are great tips to adhere to. But like in life, there can be unintended consequences with Google. Once you start treating Google with the reverence it (seems to think it) deserves, you can eliminate some of these consequences.

Complaining

I love to complain. Who doesn’t? But let’s say the last three articles on your site have been about your unbelievably bad trip to Maui. Guess what’s going to populate your Google ads on the page? That’s right! Trips to Maui!

Personal story: My regular political site spends a lot of time decrying the atrocities against women perpetrated in the name of a particular major world religion. Guess what my Google ads are for? Uh huh – dating and marriage sites geared to that faith. You can’t make this stuff up, people.

It sees you when you’re sleeping

Do not try to lie to Google – or Santa Clause. They know. Don’t ask me how, but they do. If you send an email out to your friends telling them to click on your Google ads, Google will know. And they’ll lock your account. Cast you into perdition. No amount of Hail Marys can get you out of this. And you’ll get coal for Christmas.

Quality over Quantity

For some annoying reason, Google doesn’t give a rat’s ass if you score a huge link from a prominent site that drives eleventy-trillion people to your site. All that matters is that they go for the reasons that Google themselves decree.

Personal Story: I posted a pic of Dita Von Teese on my site. This gets search engine traffic. The people that come to me from search engines mean more to Google than the ones who come to me because I got linked by some super hot blogdaddy that drives thousands of people to me. Go figure.

It’s all about the search engines. Nothing else matters.

So what can you do about it? 

I likened Google to God for a reason. It is all-powerful, and it is in charge. If you don’t like the way Google runs things, you can make up your own search engine and ad structure. It worked for Martin Luther, and it might just work for you.

Or, you can stop being such a whiney-baby and work within the system provided. You can excel at it, drive the right kind of traffic and go to Google Heaven.

There is no compulsion in Google. You can always opt out. Heathen.

The other day I wrote about how to make money fast with SEO content writing. However, as I pointed out, you won’t make a lot of money doing it. A couple of dollars here and there will not a millionaire make!

There are e-books you can generate a tidy income from, but there’s a catch: You have to write an e-book! This isn’t something that can be done overnight. Sure, your first draft can be completed in a week or so, but then there’s tedious revisions to be done. Not an overnight money-maker.

There’s web publishing, as I am doing. But this isn’t going to make you rich, and it certainly isn’t fast. I currently run 5 websites. They all need regular attention in order for advertisers to keep paying me. One blog has been up and running for 5 years. That certainly isn’t a get rich quick endeavor!

Heck, with the economy the way it is, even day traders (who have an in-depth knowledge of the stock market from years of study) can’t get rich quick.

Freelancing isn’t a parallel universe: It is real life. And as with everything in real life, you have to work hard to succeed. All those things I mentioned above? Why not use them in conjunction with each other to make money? Of course, it won’t happen overnight…

People searched Google for information on SEO marketing, and found my post about it. That’s called “organic” traffic, in that the hits were coming from people who wanted to know about SEO marketing enough to go searching for it. Those are the people that the AdWords advertisers are targeting with the ads you see to the right of the screen.

Bloggers and website owners have an opportunity to be a money-making middle man by providing space for these ads as a small income stream in addition to whatever other purpose their website provides.

There are site admins out there who do nothing except pitch for these ads, and that’s a shame, because their content tends to be useless rubbish. But if you provide decent quality content for your readers in addition to pimping the AdSense stuff, then you can make a few bucks from it.

How does this relate to freelancing? Well, somebody needs to actually write the content! Not every site admin has the time or the talent to research and publish keyword-laden articles to their site. So they provide the keywords to freelancers like me, and I turn out readable, SEO-friendly content for their site. It’s a win-win situation.

It’s a system that is beneficial to the reader who finds a new resource or product, the blogger (hi, that’s me!) who gets paid to have the ads (based on how often the ads get clicked), and beneficial to the advertiser who gains a new follower or buyer.

Oh, and naturally Google takes a cut, too! Because they find this system of advertising very lucrative, they have made it easier for everyone to get in on. The Google SEO Starter Guide will help the aspiring web writer and online worker get started with keywords and other SEO marketing tips.

Hat tip: Saad, who has a mini version of the guide available.