There are literally millions upon millions of websites out there, so how do I channel people to my website?

There is no quick way of going about this, unless you pay out serious cash for ad space in search engines, and even then your site could still flop.

There are three main areas to deal with here:

• Optimise your site, so the search engines can find you.
  
• Tell people about your site and where it is, to get yourself hits.
  
• Provide great content, so people stay there longer and visit your site again.
  

The <title> tag should give a brief description or keywords relevant to your site. Try changing the title for each new section.

• Latest Scoop: SEO techniques
  
• Latest Scoop: Images for the web
  

<meta name="keywords" content="...">

These are hidden from the user, written in the meta tags of your website . These words are what you would imagine people would type into a search engine to find your site. So think carefully and choose wisely. The key here is to be specific and straight to the point, search engines will penalise your site for having what it considers misleading keywords.

<meta name="description" content="...">

Write a brief description of your site that explains in one sentence what your site is all about. This will appear under the title of your site once someone has searched for you, so it is very important as it will help draw in that illusive click.

The first step here is to entice people to give their email address to you. You can do this by offering something for free or louring them to interesting content which is only visible after the email address has been given up to you.

Once obtained you should try to create a newsletter style email, in HTML if possible. Then hit the "send all" button. By having this as a regular feature you will encourage people to make regular visits to you site, or at least get an extra hit or two.

So make sure every email you send out has a link back to your site.

This is a way of leading people towards your site. By creating article style pages relevant to your website, clients will be drawn in to visiting your site, staying there longer and checking back for updates.

Having a unique domain name will help people remember your site and also looks very professional. You will also have the advantage of a custom email address.

Start adding your link to as many other websites as you can. Search engines trawl websites for information. Once they find a link they will branch off and search that. The more branches that lead to your website and the more popular that website is, the better rank you will end up having.

A good first step is to add it to as many online directories as possible.

Another great way of link-baiting is to use social networking sites. Invite all your friends to take a look, start a group, or even create your sites very own page.

Update your website as regularly as possible with new and unique content. If you stop updating your site, the search engine will eventually stop looking at it. A great way to do this is to create a news section or even start a blog.

You could even try using a popular blogging site and bounce that information to your own site through an RSS feed.

Make every page accessable from every page. The idea here is to keep the user clicking through your site, with every new page offering something even more irresistable than the last. Keep the user on your site for as long as possible.

The search engines will trawl through your site and branch of each internal link to the next page. So make each link count and dont waste vital anchor text (the text you highlight with the link). Write something relevant for the link like: "10 amazing SEO secrets" not "click here"!

• How many people have visited your site today/ this week/ this month?
  
• What countries/counties are they from?
  
• How long are they staying on my site?
  
• What are my most popular pages?
  
• What are my most common exit pages?
  

These are all relevant questions which can be answered by two words: "Analytical Software". There are many out there "Google Analytics" is a good one.