Website promotion is a sticky business, many methods of getting more hits are either risky - or cost money, however in this tutorial i will delve into the idea of getting more hits via search engines.

First lets take a look at the "Big 3", Google, Yahoo, and MSN are the three most used search engines in the world. If you can get a listing in one or all of these, you are well on the way to massively increasing your hits.

So the first step is to get submitted to the search engines, there are two main methods for this.

1) Wait for google to find your site its self.

Its likely that search engines will find your site its self, as long as  you have links to your site from sites that google has already indexed, the more sites your link is on - the faster you will be indexed.

2) Using a search engine submission service

Using another website to submit your site to search engines is one of the most commonly used techniques, a good free website that does this would be addme.com , however this site requires much sign up which can be a hassle.

Now that the search engines have listed you , you are feeling quite happy - until you realize that nobody will see a site that is listed on page 300 of google, so you realize that your next task will be to climb up the list and try and make it to the first page, or if you are feeling really adventurous maybe even the first result!

The key to being the top player in google is to have as many sites linking to you as possible, for example - search "gaming" on Google, the first result that comes up for me is "MSN Gaming Zone" this sit probably has millions of links from existing sites, whereas sites on page 50 probably have about 1 - 3.

So contact webmasters and ask for link exchange, remember that people don't like to be associated with shabby websites, make sure your content is well presented and your layout design is attractive, and you have a better chance of being linked to.

Another way of getting links to your site is to have unique content, as internet users will put links to it on their webpages, without you asking them to, which can be very helpful.

One of the best ways of getting more links, is to join forums listed on google, and advertise your site there, however make sure you post a little first or you will be accused of spamming.

With all that said, lets not forget that you will need to constantly update your website for it to be popular, users like to see an active website - its one of that factors that makes them visit again, in hope of finding something new - with that in mind, good luck!