Best way to conduct a multiple regression

I manage a small news website, I would like to try to better understand why some stories get more hits than others.

There are a couple of variables that need to go into this:
- How long was the story
- What type of story is it (i.e human interest, politics, finance etc).
-Was the story a top story. Each day 3 stories have pictures that accompany them in the newsfeed, this probably affects how many hits a story gets. Some stories remain a top story (i.e with pic) longer than others, this also needs to be accounted for somehow.

If this is too complicated to study then the nearest most feasible option would also be appreciated.

I would like to make an excel sheet that can be continuously updated so as to study the website over time. I am pretty good with excel but pretty lousy with statistics so please try to give your answers as if you are talking to someone with high school statistics only.

Thanks in advance!