When designing a web site, it's very important that you think like the military, and I don't mean destroy the competition (not literally anyway).

The Internet was originally a military project called ARPANET. It was a computer network design that would allow data to be rerouted in case one or more of the pieces of the network were destroyed or damaged beyond the ability function. It was smart and worked well, and thus was adapted into what we know now as the Internet.

When you create a web site, you need to have that kind of disaster planning in mind. You should have multiple streams of traffic coming into your site, not just one. Do not rely souly on search engine traffic! As all too many people can tell you, one major change in a search engine algorithm and your traffic can evaporate like a glass of water on a Texas highway in summer time!

You want search engine traffic, but you also want links from related sites. I'm talking about real links here, not links placed on some unseen back page for the sake of search engine optimization. I'm talking about real links that people can see and follow. Find link trading partners who are willing to give your link a prominent position, and do the same in return.

Also make sure you're writing articles and getting them distributed through the major article sites such as articlecity.com, ezinearticles.com and goarticles.com. Make sure your 'About the Author' box has a link back to your site and is written in a way that really pulls people in for more.

What's ironic about not making search engines your only focus is that by finding good link partners and writing and distributing articles you will actually improve your search engine rankings! All of the extra links from authority sites you got by creating good relationships with other webmasters, and all of those links earned by writing quality content for distribution will get picked up by the search engines.

So think like the military: design your traffic network in such a way that if part of it was lost you would still be going strong from the other traffic sources.

Find more great articles on adsense mistakes and how to avoid them at Jonathan Leger's blog by clicking here.