Marc

Google pays attention to many things on your site - keywords, links, content, etc. Google also monitors how 'sticky' your site is. The 'stickiness' of your site refers to how long people stay on certain pages of your site and if they come back. The longer people stay on a page, the stickier your site is, and the stickier your site, the better rank Google will give you.  

1.Good Design - Make sure your site is easy to work around. If things are cluttered on your site, people may click away and never return. If it's an easy experience for the user, people will come back.

2. Make your blog personal - People will stay with a blog that has a bit of personality. Instead of just giving off facts like a robot, add your own thoughts, write things in a way you'd say them (but make sure it makes sense). Blogs aren't wiki's or press releases, they are a way to add a face or voice to your brand.

3. Direct People - Add links at the end of your post to "continue reading", then direct them to another page. You can also write followup articles to a previous article and add a link to this new article at the end of the previous one.

4. Interactivity - If you can get people to contribute something to your blog, they will stay on it and come back to it. Interactive elements such as comments, competitions, polls, etc. can be a nice added feature to keep people interacting.

5. Respond to Comments - If somebody leaves a good comment or asks a question in a comment, you should respond back. You can either respond back via email or directly in the comments. This way, people that left a comment might come back to see what you've written. If you respond directly in the comments, others can see that you take time to read what others have to say. This adds to the personality of your blog as well.

6. Offer alternative Ways to Subscribe - Other than just subscribing via RSS, offer other ways to stay in contact with the blog such as daily email updates or a weekly newsletter.

7. Content - Good content is the most obvious factor to getting and keeping people on your site. Don't forget, content is king.

8. Simple Bookmarking - Don't for get to remind people to bookmark your site. A lot of people still use bookmarking and reminding them does nothing but good.

9. Puzzles and Quizes - Puzzles and quizzes can keep people on your site longer, just look at Farmville on Facebook. People spend hours on there. Google "free games for website" to find a lot of options out there.

10. Keep Posting - You must keep adding content. Some people will go to the home page and see how often you update. It's very frustrating to find good content and see the blogger hasn't updated in 3 weeks.

BONUS: Since you all are so nice, I'll give you a bonus point on how to make your site sticky.

Videos - Put a video on your site. Whether it's an embed from Youtube or uploaded to your own server, videos keep people on your site. Having a 1-2 minute video people can watch keeps them on the site for that duration. If they click out of the site after that video, at least you got them staying there for 1-2 minutes - a lot longer than if they read your header and clicked out.