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I’ve written before about keyword selection, and the subject is very important to anyone in internet marketing. But more than just your main keywords, it’s important to refine what people are searching for and hitting your website by creating ancillary keyword pages from your log files. The task is relatively easy.

When you notice someone hits your website on a certain term, but the page is not there in the Top 10, it shows you a few things.

1) There is demand for the search
2) You almost rank high enough to garner the traffic

If the searchers are already landing on a page that is not in the Top 10, that means you’ve almost done enough for the ranking. If that’s the case, merely optimize the page for that phrase.

If that plan doesn’t suit you, just go ahead and make a new page, optimized for the phrase. If you do this consistently over time, you’ll notice a big increase in search traffic.

October has been a great month for traffic for me. The internet really is seasonal. June and July saw some very lightweight traffic numbers and now October seems to be making up for it. The amount of traffic coming from college kids is obviously quite high. When they take off for summer, you can expect a tangible decrease in numbers.

So far it’s been a warm October where I live, so I suspect it’s like that in many parts of the world. As the weather gets colder, the traffic should go up even more. This makes this part of the year the perfect time to experiment and keep on drawing in more surfers.

I will also say that Google Adsense has been paying well this month, too. I’ve seen a lot of complaints about the program, but that could just be stagnation talking. With some tweaking, it appears the advertisers are out there.

October is great for traffic.

If you plan on going into internet marketing for a living, you probably should have a laidback personality. If you’re an aggressive type-A personality the job might not be cut out for you. Because one thing about internet marketing: it’s likely to go up and down and ebb and flow every day. You can’t expect perfectly even results each day. So if you tend to get excitable, things might get disturbing for you.

I’m not saying you have to be emotionless to do your job, because that isn’t true. But you can’t take everything serious in this job. You have to understand that even a glitch can end up affecting your results. So if your entire personality is based on how you’re doing in the SERPs that day, you’re in for a rough outing.

The need for practicing self control is obvious. Just try and react somewhat impassively to any perceived bad news by adjusting your strategy, not by getting emotional.

Is this sometimes easier said than done? Sure. But it’s worth striving for this type of attitude for the good of the long term results.

So just chill, okay?

I’d have to say that internet marketing is quite seasonal. It’s so seasonal, in fact, that next summer I plan on taking some time off to coincide with the lower traffic I’ll be expecting. There is almost no comparison between the traffic levels of June and October. The Fall sees a giant increase in traffic, compared to the summer months which are way down.

Knowing how vastly different the traffic levels are should help when it comes to making your schedule. If your traffic hits a low point in June, then that really is the month you have to consider taking a vacation during.

The flip side of this coin is that you can always consider getting your traffic up in the summer time, even if it is a slow period. Just because the overall traffic is slow doesn’t mean you can’t double your traffic from year to year. If you do, you’ll barely notice the seasonality.

People get so excited about the potential of websites because the web is truly immense. If you can manage to have a very popular website, the income potential is virtually unlimited. For that reason alone, lots of people try to hit homers when they launch a new website. But in many cases, they will fall far short of their goals.

In order to make good money online you don’t need a huge website. As long as you stick with profitability, you can’t fail. And websites don’t generally cost a lot to run. If you continue to pound out the content and do a decent job of administration, then you can plan on always growing bigger.

In the end, your website’s revenue will be a function of how consistently you’ve updated.

That’s a very famous saying, and it’s extremely applicable when it comes to running websites. There are a great number of things you can get wrong with a website, so you have to go over everything with a fine-tooth comb to make sure you don’t have any deal-breaking errors. Webmasters who don’t do a thorough quality control job can end up in big trouble.

The details are things like the server configuration, HTML, any scripting languages you use, and mod_rewrite. All of these areas take a great deal of learning, so you have to double and triple check your work to make sure there are no mistakes. One mistake in a template driven system can cause hundreds or thousands of errors.

If you notice a drop in rankings, it’s always worthwhile to check out any mistakes in your webmastering. If there are none, great. But if there are, you are the one that needs to discover them and fix them. After all, the devil really is in the details.

You really can’t beat the fall for internet marketing. After the lull of summer, people are back on their computers and surfing. Plus, with the holidays coming up, they are in a shopping mood, which means more profitable traffic. With an increase in traffic, and e-commerce, you can see how your numbers will continue to rise.

More companies than ever are advertising online

Now is truly a golden age when it comes to online advertising. More companies are doing it, and their budgets are bigger than ever. This ensures you a steady stream of deep-pocketed advertisers for your pages. Don’t be shy about adding content with all this money floating around.

Cooler temps mean more visitors

Now is the time to experiment with your pages. You’ll have a high number of visitors, so feedback should be immediate and unmistakable. Just keep a careful track of how your website is performing and keep on providing the type of content that your visitors crave.

The Fall is an excellent time of the year to be an internet marketer!

I have a one-word summary of why search traffic rules so much. That word is: FREE! Since you don’t have to pay out on gaining the traffic, and you can always monetize it, it’s an incredibly useful ally in the war on paying the bills. Tons of businesses have to pay for all of their advertising. If you don’t, you have a decided advantage over them.

It’s free, but it’s not guaranteed

The big drawback to the free traffic is that it’s not guaranteed. But so what, really? Nothing in life is really guaranteed. If you lose some free traffic, you can always find new ways to get more. The main thing is you have to stay abreast of technological changes in your field and keep a positive attitude in the face of adversity.

All in all, you need to grab all of the free search engine traffic you can. There’s no downside to it, and you can end up with a lot more traffic at your website. Well, I guess there is one downside: in the end you’ll end up getting addicted to it! Once you’ve tasted free traffic, you can never get enough of it.

Facebook is facing more challenges now that the website has grown so fast. The latest flap involves 3 UK companies pullingh their ads because they didn’t want to be associated with a political group running ads on the same pages.

Mobile phone giant Vodafone, cable operator Virgin Media and HSBC’s online banking arm First Direct all suspended their Facebook ads, fearing their brands would be sullied if linked to the British National Party (BNP).

The company didn’t want confusion given the random nature in which the ads appeared.

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“To avoid misunderstandings we immediately withdrew our advertising as soon as this was brought to our attention,” Vodafone said in a statement.

“We are working with our media buyer OMD to ensure that more robust controls are in place before we agree to any potential re-investment.”

No word on a response from Facebook yet.

The field of search marketing is constantly expanding. Let’s look at some of the more recent entrants to the field. We’ve had the obvious SEO, but don’t forget the discipline of PPC management and now SMO (Social Media Optimization). Undoubtedly this trend will continue, as more and different methods of online communication continue to proliferate.

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