How do get more hits to my website?

Getting more hits to your site can be very difficult. You need to have a site that people want to come back to, a site that is unique, and a site that is useful in some way.
But thats not rreally enough nowadays. I experienced thata even with the best site you still want to either hire a professional webmaster or use oen of those hosting services that include a certain degree of web promotion and tools so I can do most of the stuff by myself. A good place to look for this is www.WebhostSpecialist.com or www.myIOP.com. I work with myIOP for a couple of years and my sites exploded to a full time operation - thanks guys.

Try some of these tips to help bring more visitors to your site:

I cannot stress this enough, do something that is uniquely YOU. Present your material in an original way. It is so tiring to me to see site after site, the same old same old thing. ME YOU WWW etc. It drives me crazy. Be creative. My site is colorful, yeah. People complain, oh well. BUT they do notice it, and they usually don't forget it. It's very different. Make your OWN graphics, don't borrow them from other people. No matter how basic your graphics are, as long as you do them yourself, YOU will be the only one on the Web with those graphics. Resist the temptation to get your graphics from a site that makes layouts and premade graphics, for a memorable site you need to make your own graphics. My little sister hand made her graphics, with her own handwriting, and came up with a really adorable theme. I've never seen another site that looks just like hers, and if I were visiting it for the first time, I probably wouldn't forget it. There's really no good excuse not to make your own, even if you think you're not good at it. In time you will improve if you keep at it. In order to make your own graphics, you'll need a special program. You can purchase Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8, I made my first site with that, and that is the program my little sis used to make her site. If you can't afford Paint Shop Pro, you could always use a free program like Photo Plus 5.5. It's absolutely free for download. I like Paint Shop Pro better, but if you can't afford it Photo Plus is the way to go.

Have a theme to your site, and lots and lots of original content. As far as I'm concerned, NO one wants to know everything about your life. Blogs are fine, but if that's all you have on your site you're not going to get and keep visitors. Pick your favorite subject. Learn EVERYTHING you can possibly learn about it, and write about it on your site. For instance, if you like cats, make a site about cats. Teach people about the different cat breeds, how to take care of them, the right type of pet to choose for your family.

Sign guestbooks. When I first started my site, this was the only way people noticed me. I didn't have my site listed in even ONE search engine, but I had lots of visitors because I signed so many guestbooks. Make sure you look around the site first before you sign the guestbook. Nothing annoys me more than someone signing my book with "nice site, visit MINE." UGH I hate that. Mention some things you genuinely like about the site in your guestbook entry and the person will be more likely to visit yours.

Join forums. Some forums allow you to advertise your site, some do not. My forum does not. Joining a forum and being a regular member, even if the forum does not allow advertising, is a great way to get people to start noticing your site. Being obnoxious and just posting all over the place, "look at my site, please visit my site," is a sure way to turn people off.

Add your site to search engines. You can manually add your site to individual search engines. The best place to start is Google. Once you get listed there, all the other search engines will find you. If you can't find the "add url" link to add your site, just search for the phrase "add url" on the search engine you want to be added to, you'll find out there where you can add your site. Just a few pointers for getting a higher rank in the search engines. Google ranks your site according to how important other people think it is. If there are a lot of people who link to your site, you will be listed higher in the search engines. If you go to Google and type in "html help," you'll see that I come up as number 4 or 5 in a list of over 8,000,000 html help sites. That's a pretty good ranking. Google thinks my site is important. Now if my site, that Google thinks is important, links to YOUR site, Google thinks your site is important too, therefore you'll be ranked higher in their engine. For instance, I link to my little sister's site. If you type in the words "blinkie tutorial" into the Google search engine, you'll see that she comes up first or second. WOW! That's awesome, considering her site hasn't even been on the Web that long. Google uses a page rank system, other search engines use a less effective method using meta tags. Using meta tags on your site is a way to get a better listing in some search engines. One other tip, a central theme will get you ranked higher than a page all about yourself with no theme in sight.

Affiliates. This is basically a link exchange. You put a link on your site to them, and they put a link on their site to you. I personally don't do this unless it's with another site that has the same amount of traffic as I do because of the whole Google/importance thing. You want to affiliate with someone who has approximately the same amount of traffic as you do.

Webrings or "Cliques." A webring is a group of sites with a similar central theme. You place a code on your site, and someone can surf through all the pages in that Webring. I personally don't like this method because a lot of times people quit and the Webring is broken. If the ring is not well maintained, it can look very bad for your site.

Time. You need a lot of time and patience to build up a site and a visitor base. It takes years and a lot of hard work and a lot of persistence. I think that everyone today wants something right now. Like the old saying, "good things come to those who wait." Be patient.