Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to attract web traffic is publish new content regularly!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 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 blueprint. We will help you understand why an expertly configured site is different. You will also understand how much work needs to be done to ensure that when all is set up and fully configured, you will attract web traffic automatically whenever you post new content to your site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as their greatest challenge online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive worldwide and businesses are looking for every opportunity they can to improve their performance and results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge competitive advantage. For businesses, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start from the moment their site is launched.
The Configuration Process Is What Makes 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 its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All is going well in the gizmo-making plant when things suddenly cease working.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
The expert arrives shortly after being summoned and, without saying a word, immediately goes towards the main control box. After staring silently at the wires and circuitry for no more than 5 minutes, the expert then produces a tiny hammer from his tool belt and makes a single tap near the left edge of the control unit.
Immediately, everything returns once again to normal.
The manager is overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a bill for $5,000.
Unable to hide his anger, the factory manager calls the expert. Why had he charged them so much for less than 5 minutes work? He then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production 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 every right to ask to be compensated fairly for years spent building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately avert a serious 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 web properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
While the solution to many problems often seems ridiculously simple in hindsight, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring some of the site settings for a client. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party services you need to set up and activate to get specific outcomes
- Which settings you need to configure in order to make sure everything works as expected, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing a plugin, clicking a couple of buttons, or configuring some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your server, your website or blog, and various external sites and/or online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we create a simplified diagram showing the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram of the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your web server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your website will attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step is to configure a number of third-party sites and online solutions.
Configuring External Web Properties
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all content will be published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get automatically distributed to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you add these external platforms to your traffic network, content linking back to your site gets automatically fed to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your business will then receive exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of these external sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress settings to 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 Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of useful data, tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account, you can use your information to automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your up your account and site details has been entered, your account data can be integrated with WordPress using plugins and automatically sent to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account with Bing, this information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your traffic generation system in Part Four of this 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 various social media accounts set up before you can integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring 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 set up accounts with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will review some of these tools in more detail during the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online web platforms and content aggregators that can act as second-tier 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 lets you add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
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 page.
There are many different sites and platforms you can add to your web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure 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 …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As described below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services section
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
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
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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 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, your choice of displaying 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 or blog to view the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to notify the update services list whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – 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 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No website is completely safe from cyber attacks.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to bots and hackers.
Go here for more details:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web content more indexable …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress Plugin)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your website’s search engine optimization. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to find, crawl and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with members of their social networks can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site using free or inexpensive plugins)
There are many free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to specify which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress – Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, some themes also provide built-in options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) can be configured for better traffic results)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your content is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons and enabling the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
Additional Areas To Configure
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic system configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both 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 do business online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your website is compliant with all government laws and regulations.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article about the importance of having a legally compliant website here:
Tags And Post Categories
Tags and categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your website.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your website.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s post categories and tags during the Website Planning Stages.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories that have been set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications find more of your website content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although Google will index your site just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Configure Your 404 Page
When visitors enter the wrong URL or click on links pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they will typically be presented with a 404 Not Found page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your site fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do to automatically drive more traffic is publish great content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many web professionals months 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 addressed in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping site owners learn how to grow their business using a WordPress website and proven web marketing strategies.
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