1. Write pillar articles. One impressive post can make all the difference in the world. It could mean the difference between a reader forgetting about you entirely and your becoming his/her favorite site. Pillar articles take a lot longer than regular articles. The easiest way to create a pillar article is to do a list-post:

• 99 Ways To…..
• 10 Simple Methods For….
• 7 Fail-Safe Techniques To….

2. Publish often. If you don’t have time to publish often, you’re going to struggle in this area. People’s appetites for new information is incredible. The more often you can fill the appetite, the more often people will visit your site.

3. Create a ‘best of’ section. Your best work should be displayed prominently on your site. I added mine to my sidebar, because it helps to increase the PageRank of each of those posts. I’ve seen people add a page that contains their best work. I don’t think it’s a bad idea because people can find their best work, but the posts won’t get as much PageRank that way.

The reason that it helps increase the PageRank of those posts to have them in the sidebar is that they are linked to from all of your pages that way.

4. Take your site’s organization up a notch. This is especially critical if your site is a blog. Creating my organization boxes didn’t take much time and made a huge difference in the amount of people that stick around.

If I were you, I would take a look at your home page, and determine how difficult it’s going to be for your visitors to find what they’re looking for.

5. If your site is a blog, stop thinking of it as one. There are many advantages to having a blog. There are also some disadvantages with traditional blogs. Posting regularly isn’t going to be enough to get people hooked. Websites that aren’t blogs try to cover every angle of their niche. If you have a blog, you should try to do the same.

People that want to learn to make money online need to know about a lot of different topics: SEO, Adsense, sponsored posting, social media, etc. Posting once a day about random stuff won’t help anyone to learn all of that, I have to make sure that I cover all of it. Make sure you cover all the topics in your niche.

6. Install the Brian’s Threaded Comments plugin (Sorry, WordPress blogs only!). This allows you to answer your readers questions directly. Why would they continue to read your site if you don’t answer their questions? Would anyone disagree that answering your readers’ question makes your blog a more valuable resource?

7. Create a good ‘about’ page. What skills do you have that are an asset for the people who find your blog? Before people trust what you say, they will often check out your About page.

8. Show your site’s rankings. This technique can be very useful if your site has good rankings. I use a widget that I made at ShowOffRankings.com to show mine. People can and should trust you better if you have good Alexa, Technorati, and Google (PageRank) rankings .

9. Don’t show your site’s rankings. If you’re starting out, and your rankings aren’t super impressive, I probably wouldn’t use a widget that shows your rankings. I would probably still use the Alexa widget, but that’s the only one I would use. I would add it at the bottom of your sidebar where it isn’t prominent.

10. Improve your site’s rankings. When I get into the top 10,000 in Alexa, I’m sure that people will trust me and get hooked on my site a lot more than they do now. When I have a Google PageRank of 6, I’m sure the same concept will apply.

I don’t really know more now than I did when I started, but people trust me more now because my rankings continue to improve. No matter what your site is about, people will trust you more as you have a higher PageRank, Alexa ranking, etc.

11. Help your readers. Care. If you don’t care about them, you probably won’t ever have a high traffic site. No matter what niche you’re in, you can’t be a lot more successful if you’re really helping people.

12. Maintain your enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is very infectious and your passion for your topic will come through in your writing. If you’re not excited about your topic, learn to be because you’ll never make it otherwise.