Keep ‘Em Coming Back for More

By Eric Coons
Posted Monday, August 9, 2004

When I started promoting my first website, I was a complete novice. To say I know everything now is a gross mis-representation as well, but I have learned a few tips along the way. One of the ways of obtaining repeat visitors is by giving them something they really really need in the lines of your site’s topic. Here’s an example:

As I began promoting my first website, I was reading a lot of articles about linking strategies, and how important getting links was to the ranking of a site. So, I started building links. Night after night, I sat at the computer diligently getting my goal of 10 reciprocal links per night and copying down the URL and email address of all the sites I linked to, to keep track of how many links I had, so I could better determine my link popularity.

After about 1 month of manually checking search engines for my listing, I began to think…There has got to be an easier way to find out my link popularity than this (by now) huge spreadsheet. I did a search on “link popularity checkers” and dove into the results. One of the pages I came across had just the tool. Enter your URL and click a button, and voila! Link Popularity summed up in one easy number. And by clicking on the number, I could go straight to the search engine, and see who was linking to me! What a great tool! I immediately bookmarked the site so I could return EVERY day to see what my Popularity number was. It was so exciting to watch that number grow. Sometimes, I would go back to that site 2…3…4 times a day. The site also offered articles that told me how to get better numbers! That’s what I wanted! How did they know?

Well that was a while back now, but the site is still bookmarked in my favorites, and I still visit at least once per week. The point is valuable content relevant to your site will keep people coming back. And if they are coming back, they are probably telling others about your site. (I did) and if they are, more traffic will follow. Never stop improving,

A couple of ideas:

Request that the visitor bookmark the site

Ask for the sale. Don ’t be afraid to come out and tell your visitors what you want them to do. How else will they know? Make it easy for them. Add a piece of Java Script that bookmarks for them at the click of a link.

Add a cgi script to make your site interactive.

Like the site I mentioned above, I was going back, because they offered me a way of obtaining info rmation that pertained to ME. Your site is not the important thing here. It is what’s in it for your visitor. CGI script is the easiest way to get that personal interaction, and it’s easy to learn. There are many free scripts on the internet that are available to modify and use as you wish.

Quizes and Polls and Forums…Oh My!

These handy little guys really do the trick when it comes to repeat visitors. People want to see the results of the polls, or the answer to their questions in the forum, or take a quiz again to see if they do better. Use your imagination!

About the Author
Eric Coons has been involved with computers and has been designing websites since the early 1990’s. He is the webmaster of Winkingpig Webmaster Resources. This Article may be copied in its entirety only, and must contain this author block.