Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically start generating new web traffic is add content regularly!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase of the blueprint. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration stage of the traffic system. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured to drive visitors automatically when you start adding content to your website.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Also, the business landscape is becoming ever more competitive and businesses are exploring every advantage they believe will help them improve their results and performance online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over the competition. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives your business a flying start from the moment your site is launched.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is more labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Let me illustrate this point with an amusing story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Everything was moving along in the gizmo-making plant when things ground to a sudden stop.
As no one could figure out what was wrong, the manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert headed immediately towards the control box. After staring at the box for 5 minutes, the expert then produced a little hammer from his tool box and made a gentle tap about three cm from the top-right corner of the box.
Immediately, everything sprang to life.
The manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
The manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged so much for less than five minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived and was placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to ask to be compensated fairly for having spent years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WP website or blog set up and configured so all you have to do is publish new content and search engines, social networks and dozens of other web 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 challenges is often ridiculously simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which services need to be set up to achieve certain results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to ensure that processes will run as planned, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing one or two plugins, tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many components such as your server, your website or blog, and various third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings in your webhosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, 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 your website will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like implementing 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 errors, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step is to configure various third-party sites.
External Services
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all content gets published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it gets distributed automatically to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external services have been added to your network, content linking back to your site gets automatically published on these platforms. Your content and business will be given added exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of these external sites and online solutions will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to speed up the process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with important data, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your account and site details with Google are set up, this information can be used to automate traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your up your account and site data has been entered, traffic monitoring data can be easily integrated with WordPress via a simple plugin and instantly fed to other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account, the information can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which various 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 the next installment of this series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your various social media and social bookmarking 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 sites and get new traffic to your site.
Set up accounts and profiles with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can syndicate your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will look at some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse page.
There are various technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your own web traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As stated below 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 chosen 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 field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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
This section affects how your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your site to read the rest of the content from a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly ping various update services when a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
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 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
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress Security Plugins – 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 immune from a cyber attack.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to botnets and hackers.
More information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugins For SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are loads of social sharing plugins available for WordPress.
Most social plugins let you specify which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WP Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring design and layout aspects of your website, many themes also provide built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to configure your settings and enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwanted 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 business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
To learn more about how to quickly add legal pages to your website, go here:
WordPress Post Categories And Tags
Post categories and tags help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps you get more traffic.
(WordPress post categories help search engines better classify and index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and post categories should be discussed and set up 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 the post tags and categories you have set up.
Add A 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 tools discover more of your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Only search engine bots can read an XML sitemap. Although search engines like Google will index your pages 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.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Forget This!
When visitors searching online for your site type in the wrong web address or click on an invalid hyperlink, they will normally be presented with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 error page) …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your web server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do is publish new content consistently to automatically start generating more web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform this process typically takes many website professionals a long time 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 series.
This is the end of Part Three
To keep reading, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven online marketing methods.
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