Tag: Increase Web Traffic

Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using WordPress.

In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …

(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is add great content regularly to automatically begin bringing more traffic!)

In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site was built using WordPress.

(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)

In this article, we look at the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will help you understand what makes an expertly configured site different. You will also discover how much work needs to be done to make sure that when everything is set up and fully configured, you can automatically bring new visitors as you begin to post new content on your website.

WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration

The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With competition becoming increasingly more difficult businesses are looking for any opportunity they can to increase their competitiveness online.

Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage. An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a significant competitive 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 an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.

Here’s one way to describe the difference:

An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!

(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)

Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.

To illustrate this point here is a story.

A Semi-True Story …

All is going well in the widget assembly plant when everything grinds to a sudden stop.

No one can figure out what’s gone wrong and so the plant manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.

Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately goes to the control box. After staring at the box for no more than 3 minutes, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer and makes a gentle tap about three inches from the right corner of the control unit.

Immediately, everything starts working as before.

The manager is greatly 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 a request for payment of $5,000.

Feeling angry, the manager calls the expert. Demanding to know why they have been charged such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.

The next day, an invoice arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:

The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors consistently to their sites.

In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to be compensated fairly for years spent developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to assess and repair a very costly problem?

Similarly, if you could have your website or blog configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other online properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would this save you?

(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)

Although many experts often make difficult situations and problems look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy.

Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than just installing a website and configuring a few basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:

• Which plugins need to be installed to get specific functionalities on your site.
• Which third-party services you need to set up to achieve desired results
• Which settings you need to configure to ensure that everything functions as expected, etc.

(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)

This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. It’s not as easy as installing and configuring one or two plugins, tweaking some settings in your dashboard area or clicking a button … it’s all of this and much more.

The configuration stage is a process that involves your server, your website or blog, and a number of external sites and services …

(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)

If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …

(A simplified diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)

Let’s take a look at these areas.

Your Server – Configuration

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 in your web-hosting account that affect how your website will handle web traffic …

(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)

Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic you can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.

This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like implementing server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up error page redirections, etc …

(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)

Once your server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites and services.

3rd-Party Web Properties

The basic idea of setting up external sites is that all of your content will get published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.

After incorporating these external services into your configuration, content linking back to your site will be automatically syndicated to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and website will be given added exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.

Some of the sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your 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 before configuring your site:

Google Webmaster Tools

(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 essential data, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.

After setting up your account and entering site data with Google, this 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 results, SEO, marketing campaigns, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.

After setting up your Google Analytics account and site details, tracking information can be added to WordPress using a simple Google Analytics plugin and instantly sent to many other useful applications and reporting tools.

Bing Webmaster Tools

(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)

Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account and entering site details with Bing Webmaster Tools, your details can be used with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.

WordPress.com

(WordPress.com)

As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers users 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 can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your web traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.

Social Media

(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and bring new visitors to your site)

You will need to set up your various social media accounts in order to 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 accounts and get new visitors to your site.

Make sure you have pages set up with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.

There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will review some of these tools in greater detail further below and during the Automation phase).

(You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)

Additional Platforms, 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 offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.

For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress site feed …

RebelMouse

(RebelMouse)

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 account.

There are various sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your own traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.

After you have configured your server settings and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.

WordPress – Configuring Your Website

The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been correctly set up.

Let’s go over some of the important areas.

WordPress Settings

By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …

(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)

General Settings

Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …

(Settings Menu – General Settings)

Writing

The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and often overlooked traffic notification system …

(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Area)

As described in this 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 services entered into the Update Services text box

By default, this section lists only one entry …

(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)

You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …

(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 Settings

This section affects how your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.

The syndication settings in this section can have an influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your 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.

As far as your traffic system is concerned, however, the main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.

Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to automatically ping your update services list whenever a new post is 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)

Discussion

Although discussion settings are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs linked to from your articles, 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 …

(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)

Permalink Settings

Permalinks allow your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …

(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)

Here are some of the ways SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …

(Configuring post permalinks)

If you need help setting up permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO

Plugin Settings

The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.

Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to bring more visitors to your site

WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender

Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with the effects of 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, securing your website is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.

(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)

Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to hackers and botnets.

More info:

• Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin

SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO

SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving how search engines like Google find, crawl and index your website …

(SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO)

A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your website’s SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, crawl and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up 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 drive more traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.

(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site with WordPress plugins)

WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website using free or inexpensive plugins.

Many social share plugins let you choose 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 plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.

Configuring WordPress Theme Settings

As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.

For example, as well as options and settings for configuring design and layout aspects of your site, some themes also provide built-in options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …

(Many themes can be configured for better traffic results)

With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as clicking a few buttons to configure your settings and enable the feature …

(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)

WordPress Traffic Automation System – Other Features To Configure

Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.

This includes:

Compliance Web Pages

Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.

If you are making money online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your site is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.

(Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?)

We have written a detailed article about why it’s important to have a compliant website here:

• Basic Legal Pages Your Website Should Have

Post Categories And Tags

Post tags and post categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps to increase traffic.

(Post categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which helps you get more traffic.)

As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s post tags and post categories during the Website Planning Stages.

In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags you have set up.

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 applications discover more of your online content …

(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)

It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. HTML site maps are web pages that provide readers with a logical map of how your content is structured, whereas XML sitemaps are code that only search engine bots can interpret. Although Google will index your site just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.

Don’t Forget Your 404 Page Not Found

When visitors searching for your website type in the wrong web address or click on a link pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they will normally be presented with a 404 page …

(Default WordPress 404 Page)

A 404 Error Page can redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …

(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)

Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your server, there are several 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 website expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do to automatically generate web traffic is publish fresh content consistently.

The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …

(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)

The skills and knowledge required to perform this stage of the traffic automation process typically takes many website professionals a long time 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 series.

This is the end of Part 3

To keep reading, click on the link below:

• Web Site Traffic Blueprint Part 4 – Discover How To Create An Automated Web Traffic-Getting Machine

This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping website owners learn how to grow their business with a WordPress-powered website and proven web marketing strategies.

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