Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to start generating web traffic is add new content consistently!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase of this process. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. We explain how to configure a WordPress site to automatically bring new visitors when you begin to publish web content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business becoming ever more competitive worldwide, it’s worth learning about any and every advantage that can help you increase your own competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge competitive advantage. For business owners, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start from the moment their website is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s a simple way to explain the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is additional labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
Knowing Where To Tap
Everything is going well in the widget assembly line when things come to a sudden stop.
No one can figure out what is wrong and so the plant manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert goes immediately to the main control box. After staring at the control unit for what seems like 2 minutes, the expert then produces a teensy-weensy hammer and makes a gentle tap near the right-hand edge of the control unit.
Immediately, the assembly line starts working as before.
The plant manager is overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager receives an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
Angrily, the factory manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why they were expected to pay so much for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving new visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when the machines stopped working and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for having spent years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP site set up so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
Although many experts often make complex things look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up and activated to get specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to ensure that processes will run as envisioned, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. This is because it’s not as simple as installing a solution, tweaking some settings in your admin area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of a number of different parts including your server, your site, and various external sites and/or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your server that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your business may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like configuring spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites or online services.
Configuring External Web Properties
The purpose of adding external sites is that all of your content should be posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it will radiate outwards to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external sites into your system, content pointing back to your site will be automatically published on your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your business will then receive exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some sites will need to be set up before configuring your site to help speed up the process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with essential data, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site details, use your details to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, traffic tracking data can be easily integrated with WordPress using a simple plugin and and fed to various other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, this information can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers users a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated traffic system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media accounts in order to 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 pages and bring new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and pages set up with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your page.
There are many different sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Section)
As described below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section includes only one entry …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
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
***
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 in this section can influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website 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 traffic is concerned, however, the main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to notify all the update services you have listed whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion
Although discussion settings are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs linked to from your posts, 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)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways your SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress – Traffic Generation Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No blog is safe from a cyber-attack.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to bots and hackers.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web content easy for search engines to find, crawl and index …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by improving your website’s ability to rank better in search engines)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to find and index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with their own networks can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site with WordPress plugins.
Many social share plugins allow you to choose which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring Settings – WordPress Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout aspects of your website, some themes also provide options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) allow you to configure settings and options for better traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other WordPress Features
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you do any kind of business online, it’s important that your website is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
For a detailed article about why it’s important to have a compliant website, go here:
WordPress Post Tags And Post Categories
Categories & tags help search engines better organize and index your web pages, which improves traffic.
(WordPress post categories help search engines index your website, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s categories and tags during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories that have been set up.
Site Map
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, whereas an XML sitemap is mostly just a bunch of code that only search bots can read. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Another Source Of Web Traffic!
When visitors searching online for your site type in the wrong URL or click on links pointing to pages on your website that no longer exist, they will normally be greeted with a 404 page …
(A 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up in your server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do is post great content on a regular basis to automatically begin bringing new traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various components and web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some web professionals months to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next section of the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This article is part of an article series designed to help small business owners learn how to grow their business and drive traffic automatically with a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven web marketing methods.
Subscribe Using The Form Below And Get Notified Of New Tutorials!
***
"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
***