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 explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically start driving traffic is publish new content regularly!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section, we look at the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. You will learn why an expertly configured WordPress site is different. You will also discover how much work needs to be done to make sure that when all is set up and configured, you will drive web traffic automatically whenever you post new content to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as their greatest challenge online. With competition becoming progressively tougher businesses are looking for any and every advantage they can that can help you improve their results and performance online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous competitive advantage. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the very start.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website 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 you.
Here is a simple way to explain the main difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take more labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Allow me to illustrate this with a joke.
A Semi-True Story …
All was humming along in the widget assembly line when suddenly, things ground to a halt.
No one could figure out what has gone wrong and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert immediately went towards the main control box. After staring at the wiring diagrams for less than 3 minutes or so, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy hammer from his utility belt and made a gentle tap near the top-left edge of the unit.
Immediately, everything sprang to life.
The manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager received an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
The manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why the expert had charged them such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived and was placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the factory floor was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to get paid fairly for having invested years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a website or blog configured so all you have to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other web properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
While experts often make complicated situations and problems look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring some of the site settings for a client. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up to achieve certain outcomes
- Which options you need to configure to ensure that everything will function as you have imagined, 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 involved and complicated. It’s not as simple as installing a plugin, configuring some options and settings in your admin area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many components such as your server, your website, and a number of external sites and/or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Configuring The Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your web hosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic you will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like configuring server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites and services.
External Web Properties And Accounts – Configuration
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all content will get posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it will get distributed automatically to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external sites into your setup, content linking back to your website gets automatically fed to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social sites, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your site will then be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to help save time 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 Search Console
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of useful data, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site details, the account information can be used to automate traffic 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 efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your account and site details, account information can be added to all pages in WordPress via a plugin and and sent to other useful 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 has been with Bing have been set up, your details can be used to automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, 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 traffic generation system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your various social accounts before you can 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 and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site.
Make sure you 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 accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we discuss some of these tools in greater detail during the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add an RSS feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse social feed.
There are many different platforms you can add to your web traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
WordPress Settings
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As described in 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 settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, only one service is available …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 on this page can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your site to read the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to ping various update services when a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(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 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks, go here: Changing Your WordPress Permalinks
WordPress Traffic Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your website.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to hackers and botnets.
More information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(WP Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and 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 Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site with WordPress plugins)
There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins available for WordPress.
Many social plugins let you select which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which users can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your content is as easy as clicking a few buttons to configure your options and enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you do business online, it’s important that your website remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
WordPress Post Categories And Tags
Post tags and categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which improves traffic.
(Categories help search engines classify and index your web pages, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
When looking at ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites discover your online content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page – An Additional Source Of Web Traffic!
When online visitors type in the wrong web address or click on a link pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they are greeted with a 404 Not Found error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can be configured to 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 Not Found page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is add new content regularly to automatically drive more web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise required to perform the configuration stage of the traffic automation process typically takes many web professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is covered in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping small business owners learn how to grow their business and drive traffic organically using a WordPress website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
Subscribe Using The Form Below And Get Notified Of New WordPress Tutorials!
***
"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com
***