Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
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 website or blog, all you have to do to attract more traffic is publish web content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the automation 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 site, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section of the series, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. We explain how to configure a WordPress site to ensure that new web traffic will automatically start flowing simply by adding content on a consistent basis on your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive on a global scale and are exploring any advantage they believe will increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For business owners, an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
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 is a simple way to describe the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take more work 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 an anecdote.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All is going according to schedule in the gizmo assembly workshop when suddenly, all machines stops.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the plant manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrives and walks directly to the control box. After staring at the schematics for 2 minutes or less, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer and makes a single tap about three cm from the left corner of the control unit.
Immediately, the machinery starts working once again.
The floor manager is overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager receives a bill for $5,000.
Bewildered and confused, the manager calls the expert. Why were they expected to pay so much for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives and is placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one in the business had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to be compensated fairly for having spent years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress website or blog set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other online 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 site?)
While many experts often make complex solutions look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party accounts you need to set up to achieve specific results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to make sure everything functions to plan, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. It’s not as easy as installing and configuring a solution, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of various different components including your server, your web site, and various external sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the steps involved in the configuration process)
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 webhosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your server that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, 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 may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like implementing server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step is to configure a number of third-party sites.
External Accounts
The purpose of adding external sites is that all of your content will get posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it will be automatically distributed to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external sites have been added to your network, content linking back to your website is automatically syndicated to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social media accounts, even to users of the platform itself. Your website will receive exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some third-party sites will need to be set up before configuring your site to help speed up the configuration 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 before configuring your WordPress settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site data with Google Search Console, your information can be used with traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, sales conversions, 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, you can add your account code to WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and send data instantly to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, this information can be used to integrate and automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your web traffic system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking 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 bring new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts set up with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we will review some of these tools in more detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to many social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse page.
There are various platforms you can add to your own traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Global WordPress Settings
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
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 site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(You can 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 Settings
This section affects how your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or 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 traffic is concerned, however, the main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically ping various update services when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion
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 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)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
For a detailed tutorial about setting up WP permalinks, go here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to bring more visitors to your site
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with 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, web security is something you cannot ignore.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to botnets and hackers.
Go here for more details:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web content easy for search engines like Google and Bing to index …
(WP Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, classify and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with members of their own social communities can help boost traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing to your site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins let you specify which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default 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 visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress – Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, some themes also give you built-in options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic system configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online, you need to ensure that your website is compliant with government laws and regulations.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
We have written a detailed article on why it’s important to have a legally compliant website here:
WordPress Tags And Post Categories
WordPress post tags & categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your website.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that lists all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications find more of your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Only search engine bots can read an XML sitemap. Although Google will index your pages 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.
Configure Your WordPress 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching online for your website enter the wrong web address or click on a link pointing to a page on your website that no longer exists, they will typically be greeted with an error page …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up in your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do to begin attracting more web traffic is add fresh content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform this process typically takes many website developers months to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Three
To continue reading, click on the link below:
This article is part of an article series designed to help small business owners learn how to grow their business online and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven online marketing methods.
Want To Get Automatically Notified When New WordPress Tutorials Get Published? Then Subscribe Using The Form Below!
***
"Your training is the best in the world! It is simple, yet detailed, direct, understandable, memorable, and complete." Andrea Adams, FinancialJourney.org
***