Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a great skill to learn and utilize if you'd like to start driving highly targeted traffic to your web site(s) for free.

First of all, what exactly is SEO?

Simply put, it's the ability to have your website show up on the first page of the search engines when a user does a search on a particular term or search string.

As an example, you might go to Google or Bing and type in "dog training".

What would usually be returned is some paid advertising on the top and to the right of the page running down the right hand side of the page. These are sponsored ads that advertisers are placing via Adwords or adCenter, for example. The other results are what are called the "organic" search results, which are the free results, and where you would try to get your website to show up if you had a "dog training" web site.

It would be difficult to get your "dog training" website to rank on the first page of the search engines because there is a lot of competition from others who are attempting to do the same thing. It's not impossible. But it would require implementing a lot of seo techniques and it would probably take six months or more to see positive results. The more competitive the search term you are trying to rank for, the more difficult and longer it usually takes to get your website ranked on page one of the search engines.

It's exactly for this reason that utilizing seo for affiliate marketing has fallen out of favor with a lot of affiliate marketers. They have neither the time nor the patience to set up blogs, write articles, do social bookmarking, and build backlinks which are some of the things required when implementing seo. They want to make money now., not 6 months down the road.

However, there is a way to set up websites and have them rank on page 1 of the search engines in as little as 24 hours.

Let's take that same "dog training" example we discussed previously. And let's say that there is a "dog training" business located in Atlanta, Georgia that you have contracted with to build a website. And you also agreed to perform seo for them to get their website ranked on page 1 of the search engines. Because you are dealing with a specific geographical area, your seo tasks just became much easier.

You can now target search terms such as "Atlanta dog training" or "dog training in Atlanta" which have far less competition than the more broad "dog training". And by writing an article or two, or a blog post, and then creating a few backlinks via Twitter and Facebook, you can have the business website ranked on page 1 of the search engines. within a matter of days, if not much sooner.

How happy do you think the local business owner will be when you show them what you have accomplished? You will be an seo expert in their eyes!

Marketing to local businesses makes seo so much easier and the opportunities to earn a good living offering other services to them is wide open. You may not realize it, but you probably know a lot more about internet marketing than the average local business owner. And they will gladly pay you to help their business grow.

All you have to do is let them know you are available.