If you have seen the Kevin Costner movie "Field of Dreams" you would think that having designed and built your website, all you have to do is to sit back and watch the visitors arrive in their droves. But of course, it's not that easy is it? However, if you follow this four-step plan you will begin to see those visitors arrive, if not in spectacular numbers:

1. Announcing your website's presence

With the majority of traffic being generated through the top search engines (Google, Yahoo, AOL, MNS etc.) the starting point is to let them know that your website exists. This is achieved by submitting a request through their "Add/Submit URL" facilities. You can do this individually or you could think about using software to submit a batch request to most of the search engines that now exist. It you look for "search engine submission software” you will find an abundance of free and paid-for services, but I would advise against parting with your hard-earned cash at this stage.

2. Achieving a high a search engine ranking

You will probably already understand the concept that when that the search engines deliver results from your key word entry, the websites are ranked according to both the relevance and popularity. So let's examine what is meant by these terms:

Relevance - you will read a lot about making sure your website contains material that intrinsically carries value. If for instance, your website is about tropical fish, then make sure it is packed with facts about the subject and don't be shy about it. Make sure your website content carries the key words that the tropical fish fraternity will search for. If not, you can be sure your website will be consigned to appear on page13,563 of the search results. You guessed it, no one will ever see your masterpiece!

Popularity - the principal way in which the Search Engines determine the level of a website's popularity is to take into consideration the number and quality of links from other websites. The ranking algorithms used by the Search Engines are closely guarded secrets, but his is widely recognized that popularity is determined as follows:

- by the absolute numbers of links;

- they are not weighted according to the ranking or popularity of the website they are coming from;

- whether the link itself is from a website in a related sector (i.e. an aquarium wholesaler linking to a tropical fish retailer).

3. Generating Direct Traffic

This is probably the most difficult and time-consuming strategy to generate visitors. So is it worth it? I would definitely recommend it if you are offering a niche product or service or you're trying to generate leads in your local market. You can do this in a variety of ways. For instance:

-by distributing ‘fliers'

-testing the market with highly targeted advertisements

-taking every opportunity to include your website's address on e-mail, letter headed paper etc

-by word of mouth

4. “Pay-Per-Click” advertising

More and more businesses are turning to sponsored links as a means of guaranteeing prominence in the Search Engines. Google's Adwords programme is by far the market leader in pay-per-click advertising and generates millions of dollars in revenue every day. However, unless you have particularly ‘deep pockets', you should make sure you don't rely exclusively on pay-per-click traffic to your website and you should try to organically improve your visibility in the free search engine results as well.