You would never invite company over without first making sure your home were ready to receive guests. You know the drill by now! Make sure there's toilet paper on the rollers, clean hand towels n the bathroom. You may even get some snacks together, light some candles, put on some music. Set out the good china!

Getting more traffic is basically useless if you have not taken the necessary steps to prepare for that traffic in advance.

1. Obviously you want to ensure that your site works! That the navigation is clear and easy to understand and is broken down into logical groups or categories. Make things neat and tidy. Web surfers don't have time to analyze your site. They don't find any enjoyment out of "cracking the code". They just want to find what they are looking for. If you have it - great! If you don't they'll be on their way. A great rule of thumb here is don't make any navigation structure longer than 7 to 9 items. The human eye and the human brain just skips over more than that. If you have more than 7 to 9 items, break them down into further categories. Make sure you have lots of good content and use your spell checker!

2. You need to have a clear idea in mind about what you want each page of your site to accomplish. That sounds silly at first because obviously you want each page to make you money. But, realistically, there are various avenues to that money. Internet marketing is very much like dating, or to be precise, like old fashioned courting. You are building a relationship with your visitors. Some customers are very direct. They know what they want and they are gone. Others have to be wooed, slowly, but surely. This is where newsletters, email campaigns, free courses, free reports, free books and the like come in. You let them get to know you over time. So some of your pages should have the direct folks in mind. Here's the product. Here's the cost. Get these bonuses. Wham, Bam, Thank you, Mam. Others will need introductions to you and education about your product. That's all good. The more the merrier! But YOU need to know which pages are which and what you want your customers to do. This is called a "Call to Action" in marketing terms. Each page will have a different call to action. Be sure you know what it is and who it is targeted towards. These actions allow visitors to participate in your site. Do you have a forum or a blog? Do you conduct polls or surveys? Do you have a subscribe box for your opt-in list on every page of your site? (See number 4 below!) Make sure your website is ready for company! And be sure your pages lead your visitors to take the action you want them to take.

3. Learn to look at your site from your visitor's point of view. Remember that marketing your website is like courting. Think about how you look to your visitors. Do you look sloppy? Are you communicating clearly what your intentions are? Can they find the clues they need to feel comfortable doing business with you? Some things to consider here. First always make your legal documents easy to find. Make sure your physical address, and other contact information, terms and conditions, etc. are clear and easy to locate. If you are selling something, sell it. If you are giving something away for free, give it. You want them to feel comfortable. They have lots of choices of places to spend their money. You want them to feel very, very comfortable giving it to you. Consider using some technology to help in this regard. People's number one concern about spending money on the internet is safe connections. Join the Better Business Bureau. Use some kind of safety certificate and SSL connections. Use McAffee.

4. There's a saying in internet marketing and that is the "money is in the list." What that means is that there is much more money to be made for any marketer who can approach their customers over and over again with email promotions. You see once you increase your web traffic and get the customers there you have to know what to do with them. One of your main objectives as an internet marketer is to capture their email address so you can market to them again and again. This is called an opt-in list. You will need an autoresponder for this. Be sure and have this in place before spending time to generate traffic. Once they get there you don't want them to get away!

5. Next you need to make sure that your on page SEO is taken care of. Use all the best known Search Engine Optimization techniques (SEO). Make sure your HTML is clean. Use your keywords effectively. Make sure you have keyword rich text links and alt tags and that the Title tags and description and keyword tags are used correctly. This will help generate natural or organic search traffic. This really is the goal.

Once your website is ready for traffic, you are ready to start inviting folks! Making absolutely sure you are ready is the first step. Getting traffic to your site will be much more profitable now that you are ready for your visitors.