Adios Passive Income, Hello Interactive Internet Marketing

“Passive income” sounds so promising. All you’re supposed to do is build a semi-decent website, do some auto-posting to Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites, then you can sit back and watch the revenue roll in. The “passive” in “passive income” is everyone’s dream; the idea that you can earn money without having to lift a finger is utterly appealing. This article explains why truly “passive” website income is increasingly difficult to create and lays out suggestions to keep your website on top by applying some effort to improve.

Will Google Ever Stop Changing?

Google’s constant changes have search engine optimization experts’ heads spinning. From Panda to look/feel changes in Gmail, Google has been making quite a few changes lately.

By now, SEO marketers should have already figured it out: Google will never stop changing. That means that the days when you could create a site that was popular with the Google bot then relax and not touch it anymore are long gone. As soon as you think your Internet marketing job is done, it begins again due to some new tweak Google has released. A one-time link building campaign or the right balance of keyword phrases on a page are no longer enough to stay “king of the hill” on Google’s search engine results page.

What Does Google Want?

Some SEO marketers might be banging their heads against their office wall as they try to figure out the answer to the perennial question, “What does Google want from me?!”

If you’re trying to figure out what the search giant wants from you and your website, there’s one simple answer that will never fail you: Google wants its users to have an excellent experience. Starting from this one basic point, here are three changes you can make to your site to give Google’s users a better experience and thereby win points with Google:

1. Make your site faster. Since site speed is one of the things users care about the most, a faster site is a better site in the eyes of Google.
2. Use social media as it’s meant to be used. You need more than auto-posting to make social media count in your favor. Have genuine conversations with clients, customers, and blog readers and your efforts will be rewarded.

Remember that content is still king. The Panda update was all about removing sites from the top of the SERP which really didn’t contain very relevant or useful information. Faking valuable content will work less and less as time goes on. Its already painfully clear that poor content or web content that offers no original information has cost many a website stature in search results.