Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to drive web traffic is publish great content consistently!)
In Part 2, we discussed critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. We explain why an expertly configured WordPress site is different, and what kind of work is required to make sure that when all is set up and fully configured, you can bring web traffic automatically simply by adding new content on your website.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration
The ability 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 and are exploring any advantage they believe will improve their performance online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand is a tremendous competitive advantage. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the very beginning.
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 an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to explain the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All was working according to schedule in the widget manufacturing plant when suddenly, everything stopped.
No one could figure out what has gone wrong and so the manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
The expert arrived soon afterwards and, without uttering a word, immediately went to the main control box. After staring at the board for what seemed like 2 minutes or less, the expert then took out a little hammer and made a very gentle tap near the top-left edge of the unit.
Immediately, everything began working once more.
The manager was relieved as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
The manager called the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them such a ludicrous fee for less than 5 minutes work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped working and no one in the business had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to get paid fairly for years spent building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a site set up so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other web properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
Although the solution to many challenges often seems quite simple once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than simply installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which services need to be set up to achieve desired outcomes
- Which options need to be configured to make sure things work as expected, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved and time-consuming. This is because it’s not as simple as installing one or two plugins, clicking a couple of buttons, or configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration phase is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your website or blog, and a number of external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we create a simple flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic you may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like implementing server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites.
Third-Party Accounts
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all of your content will be published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will syndicate automatically to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external services into your configuration, content pointing back to your site is automatically fed to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and site will then receive exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some sites and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site’s settings 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 website or blog)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of useful information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
Once your account and site details have been set up, the details can be used with traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your up your Google Analytics account and entered your site details, tracking information can be easily integrated with WordPress via a plugin and automatically fed to other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account and entering site data, you can use the details to integrate and automate traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your web traffic 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 drive new visitors to your site)
You will need your social accounts set up 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 and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
You should have profiles with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will review some of these tools in greater detail during the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging web platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your social feed.
There are various sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your own traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party services, 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 set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress admin area includes a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(WordPress 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 have purposely configured your settings to prevent 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 text area
By default, this section lists only one entry …
(Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress takes care of the rest …
(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 have an influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could play a part in 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 most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to automatically notify various update services whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
Although discussion settings are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites linked to from your content, 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)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings enable your site to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring permalinks)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: How To Change WordPress Permalinks
Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your site, including many plugins that improve 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 WordPress site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is completely safe from cyber attacks.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to bots and hackers.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugin)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to find, classify and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily with WordPress plugins.
Most social share plugins allow you to specify which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also provide built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes can be configured for better traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure For Improved Traffic
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic system configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good 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 engage in any form of business online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
To learn more about the importance of having a compliant website, refer to this article:
WordPress Post Tags And Post Categories
WordPress tags & categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your website.
(Post categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s post categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal results.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A 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 tools discover your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: 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 contains code that only search engines can understand. Although Google will 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 can result in increased traffic.
Your 404 Error Page
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on a dead hyperlink, they are presented with an error – page not found message …
(A 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then to automatically attract new traffic is publish new content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration process typically takes many web professionals months to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive tutorial series aimed at helping site owners learn how to grow their business online with a WordPress website or blog and proven online marketing methods.
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