Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to generate web traffic is publish great content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section, we will discuss the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. You will learn what makes an expertly configured site different from a professionally configured one. You will also discover how much work is required to make sure that when everything is set up and fully configured, new visitors will automatically start flowing simply by consistently adding web content to your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as their greatest challenge online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale and are looking for any advantage available to get better results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage over the competition. For businesses, an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
The Configuration Process Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to describe the differences:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
Knowing Where To Tap
All was humming along in the gizmo assembly plant when suddenly, everything just stopped.
As no one could figure out what was wrong, the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived shortly afterward and immediately went to the control box. After staring silently at the board for what seemed like 5 minutes or so, the expert then took out a little hammer and made a gentle tap near the left corner of the box.
Immediately, the assembly line sprang back to life.
The plant manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay such an exorbitant fee for so little time delivering such a minimal amount of work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived and was placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to ask to be compensated fairly for years spent building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a site set up so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social media and dozens of other web properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
While the solution to many challenges is often ridiculously easy once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than simply installing a website and configuring a few basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to get desired functionalities on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve specific outcomes
- Which settings you need to configure in order to ensure that processes will run as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. It’s not as easy as installing one or two plugins, clicking a couple of buttons, or configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration phase is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your website, and a number of external sites and/or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram of the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Configuring Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your business can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like implementing server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites and online services.
Configuring External Web Properties
The basic concept of choosing external sites is that all content should be published to a central location (your site) and from there, it will radiate outwards to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external services into your configuration, content linking back to your website will get automatically posted to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your website receives additional exposure online, helping you tap into a whole new audience and source of traffic.
Some sites and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site to speed up the configuration process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts before configuring your settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with important data, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account is set up, you can use this information with web traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your account and site data, account information can be integrated with WordPress using a Google Analytics plugin used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account and site data with Bing are set up, use your details to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your web traffic system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media and social bookmarking accounts in order to configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and get new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and pages set up with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(There are loads of social sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse website.
There are various platforms that can be incorporated into your own web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to read the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to automatically ping various update services when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites linked to from your articles, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings Screen)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s permalink URLs …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more visitors to your site
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot ignore the importance of securing your site.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to bots and hackers.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website with WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social plugins let you choose which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, many themes also include options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings for better traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your content is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure For Increased Traffic Results
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do any type of business online, it’s important that your site is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Categories & Tags
Tags & post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.
(WordPress post categories help search engines better organize and index your website, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s post categories and tags during the Website Planning Process.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A site map that lists all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications discover more of your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Only search engine bots can read an XML sitemap. Although search engines like Google will index your site just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Your 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching online for your site type in the wrong web address or click on links pointing to pages on your site that no longer exist, they are presented with an error page (known as a 404 error page) …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 Not Found error page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your web server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then to drive more traffic is post new content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration stage of the traffic automation process typically takes many web professionals months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is explained in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping website owners learn how to grow their business online with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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