Category: Traffic Generation

Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.

In Part 1 of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …

(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is add new content consistently to automatically begin bringing new web traffic!)

In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. 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 two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)

In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured to automatically get new visitors when you publish fresh content to your website.

WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration

Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as their greatest challenge online. With business getting so much more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth exploring any advantage that can help you improve your own performance and results online.

Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the very start.

Configuration Is The Difference

There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.

Here’s one way to describe the differences:

With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus an automated online business marketing system!

(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)

Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.

To illustrate this here is an amusing story.

Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …

Everything is going well in the gizmo manufacturing plant when things suddenly grinds to a complete stop.

As no one can figure out what’s gone wrong, the floor manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.

Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately heads to the control box. After staring at the box for 3 minutes, the expert then produces a teensy-weensy little hammer and makes a single tap about one inch from the left edge of the box.

Immediately, the plant comes back to life.

The manager is greatly overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.

A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a request for payment of services rendered for the amount of $5,000.

Outraged and furious, the manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why they were expected to pay so much for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.

The next day, an invoice statement arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:

The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving traffic to their sites.

In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the plant stand to lose when the equipment stopped working and no one on the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to get paid fairly for years spent acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to assess and avert a crisis?

Similarly, if you could have your WordPress site configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other web properties would be automatically 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 can seem quite simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.

Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring some of the site settings for clients. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:

• Which programs you need to install to get desired functionalities on your site.
• Which third-party accounts need to be set up and activated to achieve specific outcomes
• Which options you need to configure to make sure everything functions to plan, etc.

(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)

Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite complicated. It’s not as easy as installing a solution, configuring some settings in your admin area or clicking a button … it’s all of this and so much more.

The configuration phase is a complex process that involves your server, your website, and a number of external sites and 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 something like this …

(A simplistic flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration phase)

Let’s take a look at what’s involved.

Your Web Server

We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is tweaking settings and options in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …

(In the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)

Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your business will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.

This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess and 404 redirections, etc …

(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)

After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to set up and configure a number of external sites and services.

External Accounts

The purpose of setting up external sites is that all content gets published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it radiates outwards automatically to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.

Once you add these external sites to your traffic network, content with links pointing back to your site is automatically fed to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social networks, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and site benefits from exposure online, helping your business tap into a new audience and traffic source.

Some web properties and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to speed up the process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.

For example, you will want to set up the following accounts:

Google Webmaster Tools

(Google Webmaster Tools)

Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.

Once your account and site details with Google have been set up, use the information to automate traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.

Google Analytics

(Google Analytics)

Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.

Once your Google Analytics account is set up, you can add visitor tracking information to all of your web pages in WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and send data automatically to various other applications.

Bing Data And Tools

(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)

Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account and site data with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, use the account information with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.

WordPress.com

(WordPress.com)

As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional business presence online.

WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.

Social Media

(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and bring new traffic to your site)

You will need your various social media and social bookmarking accounts set up before you can integrate these with 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 sites and get new traffic to your site.

Make sure you have set up accounts with all the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.

There are loads of social sites you can set up and syndicate your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will cover some of these tools in greater detail further below and during the Automation phase).

(There are many social sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)

Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.

There are a number of new online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.

For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …

RebelMouse

(RebelMouse)

RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse account.

There are various solutions that can be incorporated into your own traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.

After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.

WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog For Traffic

The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.

Let’s go over some key areas.

WordPress – Global Settings

By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …

(WordPress settings menu)

General Settings

Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …

(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)

Writing Settings

The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …

(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Section)

As described below the Update Services section title,

When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …

Unless you have intentionally configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services text box

By default, this section contains only one entry …

(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)

WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …

(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

***

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 your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.

The syndication settings in this section can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to view 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 your traffic system is concerned, however, the most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.

Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly notify the list of update services whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …

(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)

Discussion Settings

Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs 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 …

(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)

Permalinks

Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …

(Settings Menu – Permalinks)

The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s permalinks …

(Configuring permalink URLs)

For a detailed tutorial on setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: How To Configure Your WordPress Permalinks

Plugins

The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.

Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples

WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender

Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No website is safe from being attacked.

(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)

Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.

For more details, go here:

• Prevent Malicious Cyberattacks On Your WP Web Sites From Hackers With Blog Defender Security Plugin

WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO

WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …

(Yoast SEO – WP Plugins For SEO)

Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.

WordPress Social Sharing Plugins

Allowing visitors to share your content with others can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds value to readers.

(You can add social features to your website easily using free or inexpensive plugins)

You can add social sharing features to your website easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.

Many social share plugins allow you to choose which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which users can unlock by sharing your page.

WordPress – Themes

As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.

For example, as well as options and settings for configuring layout and design aspects of your website, many themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …

(Many themes allow you to configure settings and options for improved traffic results)

With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …

(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)

Other Configuration Features For Your WordPress Site

Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.

This includes the following:

Website Compliance Pages

Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.

If you make money online, you need to ensure that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies.

(Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?)

If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:

• Why You Need To Add Legal Pages To Your WordPress Site

WordPress Tags & Categories

WordPress categories and tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.

(WordPress post categories help search engines index your pages, which improves traffic.)

As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s post categories and tags during the Website Planning Phase.

When configuring your website or blog to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags you have set up.

A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages

A visitor site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications discover more of your online content …

(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)

Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.

Your Site’s 404 Page Not Found

When visitors searching for your website type in the wrong URL into their browser or click on an invalid link, they will typically be greeted with a 404 Not Found page …

(A WordPress 404 Page)

A 404 page can redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …

(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)

Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.

WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary

Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do is add great content on a consistent basis to automatically generate more traffic organically.

The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and external web properties …

(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)

The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration process can take many website professionals months to acquire.

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 System series.

This is the end of Section Three

To keep reading this article, click on the link below:

• Website Traffic Blueprint Part 4 – A Complete Guide To Increasing Your Website Traffic Automatically

This tutorial is part of an article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online using a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven online marketing methods.

Want To Get Automatically Notified When New Tutorials Are Published? Then Subscribe To WPCompendium.org!

***

***