If you don’t visit your own site, how can you expect people or the search engines to find anything there worth coming back for? How do you get people to return to your web site? Well, here are some ideas to help you entice a return visit:

• News. Post updates on your products, services, latest happenings in your field, links to news articles and your take on them and how they affect what you do. Use RSS feeds and Blogs to do this. Blogs are highly recommended as they provide a user friendly interface that will let you do the posts yourself and thereby keep your costs down as you won’t have to hire your web designer to constantly keep your site updated. Search engines love feeds and blogs that are updated regularly and your visitors will rely on you to keep them informed and/or entertained.
• Articles. Share your knowledge and expertise and not just with your site’s visitors as you can offer your articles to other sites, newsletters, and blogs. For more information, check out Publishing = Rankings Part I and Publishing = Rankings Part II.
• Newsletters or Mailing Lists. Put your news, site updates, articles, etc. into a newsletter or mailing list emailed to customers and published on your site.
• Emails. Add opt-in email notifications for announcements, news, site updates, specials, etc. Only do opt-in, do not get into SPAMming.
• Contests, Incentives, or Specials. By offering contests etc., you provide current customers with a reason to visit your site. You also open the doors to new customers who have to fill out a contest form in order to enter and you thereby get a potential new customer.
• Partnerships. Link to sites that add value to your site, such as other businesses or services you use or work with all the time, and make sure you add text around the link that says why the link is there and why the site is recommended. If your customer’s trust you, then they will value your recommendations.
• Join forums. Volunteer to moderate on a forum in your area of expertise. Every post you make has your site’s URL in your signature which equals free advertising and tons of links back to your site.

Never focus on just getting the search engines to visit your site. If you work on getting people to come back and visit your site, the search engines will follow suit, trust me!