One of the most commonly asked questions I get via e-mail is “how do I get visitors to my website?”. Nine times out of ten these people don’t just mean visitors, they mean people who’re going to comment on weblog entries, return daily and generally worship the owner of the website in question.

I am not going to be able to make people love you. If you can’t type, have no basic grasp of English (or whatever your target language is), are not in the slightest bit funny or don’t have anything worthwhile or intelligent to say: you’re not going to keep more than about three repeat visitors. This sucks, boohoo, find a new hobby.

I am going to help you increase your overall hits which hopefully in turn will result in you gaining some loyal visitors. Don’t think it’s an easy ride though, it does require effort on your part.

Step 1. Have an Opinion

Having an opinion is not going to bring visitors in itself, but I’ve found that when visitors do arrive, they are more likely to read an interesting viewpoint rather than looking at generic reads/etc. This doesn’t mean simply posting a page saying “I disagree with the death penalty. I think gay marriage sucks. I hate abortion. I love George Bush” — do a little bit of research, write out some structured paragraphs with clear points on what you do and do not agree with.

The key to this is not being afraid to say what you think. Bear in mind that at some point, at least one person is going to disagree with you and will more than likely express themselves as such. You have three options: allow them to have their opinion but don’t rise to it (i.e. ignore them), delete their comment and pretend it never happened, or lastly.. rant and whine like a baby that someone doesn’t agree with what you say. While the third will probably create drama and in turn gain you more hits, it’ll also give you a reputation you won’t want.

Step 2. Present Yourself Properly

Unless your target audience really is idiotic chat-speaking teenagers then don’t t@LK lyk dis. I would much rather read a website where the owner has made the effort to construct proper sentences and I think the majority of people feel the same way. Every word-processing program that I’ve ever used comes with spell-checking functionality (including OpenOffice — which is free). If you know your spelling is crap: use a spelling checker.

Step 3. Get a Blog, Blog About Everything

A lot of my repeat visitors only come for my blog. They love the variety of topics I cover on a near-daily basis. You don’t have to be a master article writer to keep a blog, just a paragraph or two every day or so will do. Don’t just blog about the same old crap, either. You’re more likely to get a wider variety of visitors from search engines if you talk about completely random stuff like picking your nose and crappy TV shows like The X Factor.

The key to a successful blog is regular updates. If I post sporadically, my hits take a tumble. On days where I’ve not updated my website at all I get as low as half of the hits I usually receive. Work out a timetable that works for you and stick to it — the more often you can blog, the better. One word of warning though: anyone who blogs about visiting their local shopping mall with friends and seeing super hot boys and buying trendy new shoes, needs to be shot.

Don’t forget to enable comments, which brings me onto my next point..

Step 4. Return ALL Comments

Until you become a popular blogger that everybody loves and visits, you need to return every single comment. This shows people that you’re interested in them (even if you’re really not) and also ‘advertises’ your sites to potential nosy gits who read other people’s comments. If what you say is witty or insightful, this is even better.

Site promotion tools that force you to leave comments could also be covered in this category, but I don’t like them so I’m not linking to any. At least you know they exist now though, eh?

Step 5. Get Reviewed

I know a lot of people don’t like asking for reviews because they’re insecure about their site and worried about what people will say; the most simple answer to this is “tough”. There’s always going to be someone out there who doesn’t like you, your website, what you write/etc and a review will either confirm it or provide you with some lovely ass-kissing. Either way, I receive about 25% of my traffic from review sites that reviewed me as far back as 2004 simply because people want to see what has changed or what I said in reply to the review.

If you’re really into reviews and reviewing, you could always join YourSite.nu. The problem with this ‘method’ is that you actually have to review people to get return traffic and it’s not guaranteed unless you pick someone who does a “review for review” service.

Step 6. Comment on Comment-Plugger Blogs

Nobody likes reading pointless comments, but if you don’t mind leaving them, then this method is perfect. Find as many blogs as you possibly can where the blog author has installed a plugin to automatically link to commenters on their front page. Comment on an entry and bang — not only does Google count this as an additional link to you, thus increasing your overall listing in the search engine, but at least one person will click your name to see who you are.

An advisory note: leaving comments related to the entry you’re commenting on is a good idea, otherwise the chances are high that you’ll just be banned for spamming or will have your comments deleted.

Step 7. Give Something Away

Visitors are more likely to return and/or link to you if you have something to offer. I’m not suggesting you design and implement an entire graphics resource centre or publish 40,000 WordPress themes — a single quality item should be enough to bring in more visitors. It’s even better if you’re generous enough to make this item free, and allow people to direct-link to it (dependant on what it is, of course).

A single emoticon set, a couple of stock photographs, a WordPress theme, a simple tutorial on modifying a popular script — any one of these things that will be of interest to other people.

Step 8. Have an Opinion

Sound familiar? Good. Here’s some quick tips for opinion pieces:

• Make them clear, concise and sum up your points.
• Stick to your guns — make the piece read like your opinion is the only one worth having (like mine).
• Write about something interesting. Cover something controversial.
• Disagree with the mainstream, and give an interesting argument why.
• Get your facts right. Nobody likes a bullshitter.

Step 9. Validate, Accessibilise, etc.

Most people laugh at me when I suggest validation and accessibility as a tool for increasing hits. They assume I’m just being an elitist standards-obsessed git again. They tell me that 99% of their audience use IE anyway. The reason being? They’re in denial and IE is the only browser people can get to the page with.

Even if only one in ten of your visitors use Firefox, Opera or a browser other than IE, that’s still one in ten that you need to cater for. If you impress that one visitor, they could link to your website which in turn might drive 5, 50 or even 500 new visitors your way. The same goes for people with disabilities that prevent them browsing as we would; cater for everybody.

Step 10. Link to Me

This won’t increase your hits, but it’ll increase mine. I’m not just saying this because I couldn’t think of a Step 10, honest…