Whether you are selling advertising space, selling actual merchandise, or selling information, you determine your success or failure by your ability to get people to visit your site. If you started a business and put all of your advertising on the side of a dirt road with minimal traffic, then you probably won't see any fruit produced by that effort. In the same way, you want your store to be located in a busy part of town where casual shoppers linger.

Your best business may come from people who just dropped in while window-shopping.

The key to succeeding in any internet related business is traffic. You must find ways to lead potential customers to your front page. If you think you can rely solely on the search engines to put you at the top of their lists, then you may be setting yourself up for failure. Search engines use a complicated formula when deciding which pages show up first.

Unless yours is the only business of your kind in the world that has a web site, you probably won't get to the top of the list. If for some reason you do, then you probably won't stay there for very long.

Corporations buy the rights to search phrases and generally pay big money for the opportunity to be highlighted at the top of the list. One interesting point to keep in mind is that the more traffic you have at your site, the more likely you are to slide up in the search engine results.

The question then, is how do you get that initial flow of customers, clients, or readers to make your website a place that they regularly visit?

For example, as a basic rule, as you plan and design your website, you should be looking at other sites that are in the same genre as yours. Maybe they offer similar or complimentary services. Maybe they provide information about the same topic.

Try to build relationships with the operators of these sites. Leave comments on their blogs and participate in forum discussions, leaving a link to your own page in your signature.

You may want to consider adding a blog to your website. Create an RSS feed that notifies subscribers whenever you have updated information. Be diligent about keeping the content on your page fresh and you will find that you begin to get repeat traffic. Others will begin to link to you from their own pages and list you as a valuable source of current information.

Just as in any traditional business format, building relationships and networking will be vital pieces of your success. The important thing, as you are beginning, is that you have a strong understanding of the fact that it takes some work. The traffic flow at your website won't happen by accident.

It takes careful planning and sharp execution to make that hit number go up. Keep an eye out for future articles to show just how to do it!