Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is publish new content consistently to attract new traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. We explained 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 existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration phase of the traffic system. We will explain why an expertly configured WordPress site is different. You will also learn what type of work is required to make sure that when everything is set up and fully configured, you can automatically bring new traffic just by regularly adding new content to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as their greatest challenge online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive worldwide and are exploring any advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage over other competitors. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
The Configuration Phase Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to explain the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing anecdote.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Things are running smoothly in the widget plant when suddenly, production comes to a halt.
As no one can figure out what’s wrong, the plant manager decides to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert walks immediately to the main control box. After staring silently at the schematics for less than 5 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a little hammer from his utility belt and makes a very gentle tap about one inch from the right side of the box.
Immediately, the whole workshop lights up and returns to normal.
The plant manager is overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives an invoice for the amount of $5,000.
Bewildered and angry, the factory manager rings the expert. Why had they had been charged such an exorbitant fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment 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 being able to drive web traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the factory stand to lose when the machines stopped working and no one in the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WP website or blog set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other online properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
While the solution to many problems may seem ridiculously simple once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content 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 third-party services you need to set up to achieve specific results
- Which settings you need to configure in order to make sure things will function as planned, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and complicated. It’s not just about installing a piece of software, clicking a button, or configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of many parts including your web hosting server, your site, and various external sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram of the configuration process)
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 web-hosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your hosting account specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During 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 web traffic you can attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess 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 (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various third-party sites and services.
External Web Properties & Services – Configuration
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all of your content should be posted to one central location (your site) and from there, syndicate automatically to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external services have been added to your network, content with links pointing back to your site will get automatically added to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and site will be given exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these third-party sites will need to be 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, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with essential data, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account, you can use this information with traffic 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 traffic results, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, you can add traffic monitoring code to WordPress using plugins and feed data automatically to other applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account, the details can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers both a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media accounts set up in order to configure these as part of 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 drive new visitors to your site.
You should have pages set up with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select the ones that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(You can post your content to lots of social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging web platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications you can add to your web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains an important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(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 specifically configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section includes only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
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 Settings
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 web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog 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 your traffic system is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to ping all the update services you have specified in the Update Services box whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – 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 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)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s post permalinks …
(Configuring post permalinks)
For a detailed tutorial on setting up WordPress permalinks, go here: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
Configuring Settings – Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality to your website, 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 WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is safe from cyberattacks.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your website’s ability to rank better in search engines)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find, classify and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website with WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins let you specify which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
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 better indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other Sections Of WordPress
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor 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 as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online, you need to make sure that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
We have written a detailed article on how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress site here:
Post Tags And Post Categories
WordPress categories and tags help search engines better classify and index your web pages, which helps you get more traffic.
(Post categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be reviewed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories that have been set up.
HTML Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites discover more of your site’s content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin 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.
Don’t Forget Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When online users enter the wrong URL into their browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your website that no longer exist, they are presented with an error – page not found message …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover 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 allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is post great content on a regular basis to begin bringing new traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration process typically takes many web developers a long time to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is explained in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
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