Tag: Traffic Generation

Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new traffic automatically to your website using WordPress.

In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …

(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically generate more web traffic is post new content on a regular basis!)

In Part Two, we discussed critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start 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 site has been built using WordPress.

(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)

In this article, we will discuss the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site so you can ensure that web traffic will automatically start flowing when you start publishing content on your WordPress site.

WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration

Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive and are looking for any and every advantage they can to increase their competitiveness online.

Being able to generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the word “go”.

The Configuration Phase Is What Makes All 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 an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.

Here’s a simple way to describe the difference:

An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing process!

(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)

Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.

Let’s illustrate this with a joke.

Knowing Where To Tap

Everything is going well in the gizmo plant when suddenly, all machines grinds to a halt.

As no one can figure out what’s happened, the manager decides to call in an expert.

Soon afterwards, the expert arrives and, without uttering a word, immediately walks to the control box. After staring silently at the electronic components for what seems like 2 minutes, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer from his pocket and makes a gentle tap near the right side of the box.

Immediately, every machine starts working once again.

The floor manager is grateful and relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.

A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request of payment for services for the amount of $5,000.

Puzzled and confused, the factory manager calls the expert. Why had he charged them such a ludicrous fee for less than five minutes work? He then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.

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

The main 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 the equipment ground to a halt and no one on 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 having invested years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately repair a very costly problem?

Similarly, if you could have your WP blog configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites and dozens of other web properties would be instantly 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?)

Although experts often make difficult solutions look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to figure things out.

Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:

• Which programs need to be installed to get desired functionalities on your site.
• Which services need to be set up and activated to achieve certain outcomes
• Which settings need to be configured to make sure everything will function as expected, etc.

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

This part of the traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing and configuring one or two plugins, clicking a button … it’s all of this and so much more.

The configuration phase is a complex process that involves your web server, your website or blog, and a number of third-party sites and online services …

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

If we create a simple diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …

(A simplified diagram showing the steps involved in the configuration process)

Let’s examine these areas.

Your Server – Configuration

We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your web-hosting account that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …

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

Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your site will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.

This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both good and unwanted traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like implementing spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …

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

After checking your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to set up and configure a number of third-party sites.

3rd-Party Accounts Integration

The purpose of adding external sites is that all of your content should be posted to a central location (your site) and from there, syndicate automatically to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.

Once you add these external platforms to your system, content linking back to your site will be automatically fed to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content will receive added exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.

Some sites will need to be set up before configuring your 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 Search Console)

Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with essential information, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.

After setting up your account and entering site data with Google, you can use the account information to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.

Google Analytics

(Google Analytics)

Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.

Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, tracking data can be easily integrated with WordPress using a simple Google Analytics plugin and and fed to various other useful applications and reporting tools.

Bing Data And Tools

(Bing Webmaster Tools)

Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account has been set up, you can use this information with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.

WordPress.com

(WordPress.com)

As explained in Part 2, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to grow a professional online presence.

WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful 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 these features into your automated traffic system in the next installment of this article series.

Social Media Pages

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

You will need your social media accounts set up before you can 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 accounts and drive new traffic to your site.

Set up profiles with all the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.

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

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

Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.

There are many new online technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access 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 WordPress site …

RebelMouse

(RebelMouse)

RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your account.

There are many different solutions that can be incorporated into your own traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.

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

Configuring Your WordPress Site For Traffic

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

Let’s go over some of the important areas.

Global Settings

The WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s main 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 Settings

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 Screen)

As stated in this section,

When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …

Unless you have intentionally configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services text area

By default, this section includes only one entry …

(WordPress Update Services)

You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …

(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 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 of displaying the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up 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 main setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.

Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to automatically ping all the update services you have listed when a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …

(Global 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 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 …

(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)

Permalinks

Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …

(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)

The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s permalink URLs …

(Configuring permalinks)

We have created a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Configuring Your WordPress Permalinks

WP Plugins

The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including traffic generation.

Let’s take a brief 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 WordPress site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is safe from being attacked.

(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)

Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and bots.

Go here for more information:

• Hide Your WordPress Website From Hackers With Blog Defender Security Plugin For WordPress

SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO

SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web content easy for search engines like Google to find, crawl and index …

(WP Plugin – Yoast SEO)

Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to index, it also lets you specify how to present your content in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

WordPress Social Sharing Plugins

Allowing your visitors to share your content with others can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds value to readers.

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

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

Many social share plugins allow you to choose which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.

Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation

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 the design and layout of your website, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …

(Many themes include built-in traffic optimization features)

With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …

(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)

Other Areas To Configure For Increased Traffic

Last but not least in the 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 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 are making money online, you need to ensure that your website remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online.

(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)

If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:

• The Importance Of Having A Legally Compliant Website

Post Categories & Post Tags

Categories and post tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your website.

(WordPress categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps to increase traffic.)

As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and post categories should be discussed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.

In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits and results.

Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site

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 applications find more of your online content …

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

An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Only search engines can interpret XML sitemaps. Although search engines like Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – 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 To Configure It!

When visitors type in the wrong web address or click on hyperlinks pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they are presented with an error page …

(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)

A 404 page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional web pages …

(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover 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 allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.

WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary

Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to automatically start driving web traffic is post new content on a regular basis.

The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …

(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)

The skills and knowledge required to perform the configuration phase of the traffic automation process typically takes some website professionals a long time to acquire.

Once you have expertly 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 the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.

This is the end of Part 3

To continue reading, click here:

• WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint Part Four – Discover How To Create A Web Traffic-Getting Machine

This tutorial is part of an tutorial series designed to help small business owners learn how to grow their business online using a WordPress-driven website and proven web marketing methods.

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