Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is publish great content regularly to begin bringing new traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration phase of the traffic system. We explain how to configure a WordPress site so you can automatically start attracting visitors simply by regularly adding new content on your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive worldwide and are exploring any advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage over other competitors. For business owners, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start as soon as their website is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s one way to describe the differences:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Allow me to illustrate this point with a story.
A Semi-True Story …
All is humming along in the widget plant when the equipment suddenly grinds to a complete stop.
As no one can figure out what’s wrong, the plant manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrives and, without saying a word, walks directly to the control box. After staring at the wiring board for less than 3 minutes, the expert then produces a tiny little hammer from his tool belt and makes a gentle tap near the right edge of the unit.
Immediately, the whole workshop lights up and springs to life once more.
The floor manager is relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Angry and confused, the factory manager calls the expert. Why had he charged them so much 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 notice 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 new visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for having spent years developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your web site configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other online properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
While experts often make complex situations and problems look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than just installing a website and configuring basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to get specific results
- Which options need to be configured to make sure things work as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. This is because it’s not as easy as installing a piece of software, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many components including your web hosting server, your website or blog, and a number of external sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps.
Configuring Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your web server 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 traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your site will attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for both good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up 404 error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to set up and configure a number of external sites and services.
Configuring External Web Properties
The basic concept of setting up external sites is that all of your content is posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it gets automatically distributed to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external platforms into your network, content with links pointing back to your site will be automatically posted to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social networks, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and site will then receive additional exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some sites will need to be set up before configuring your settings to save time 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 Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of essential information, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account with Google Webmaster Tools are set up, you can use this information with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, 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, account data can be integrated with WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and automatically fed to other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account and entering site details, you can use the account information to integrate and automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to grow a professional online presence.
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 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 drive new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social accounts 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 accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
Set up profiles with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will review some of these tools in greater detail in the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. 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 your WordPress blog 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 RebelMouse website.
There are various solutions you can incorporate into your web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Site Configuration
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 key areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
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)
As stated 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, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section contains only one entry …
(WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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
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 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 readers and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to read 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 in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to automatically ping various update services when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion Settings
Although the settings in this section 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 content, 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
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Traffic Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your web site is something you cannot ignore.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
Go here for more information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving how search engines find and index your website …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugin)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find, classify 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 your visitors to easily share your content with others online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your site with free or inexpensive plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins available for WordPress.
Many social sharing plugins let you select which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your pages which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
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, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for better traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other WordPress Features
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic system configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you do any kind of business online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article about adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
Tags And Categories
Post categories & post tags help search engines index your pages, which helps you get more traffic.
(WordPress categories help search engines better organize and index your web pages, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post categories and tags should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
Add A Site Map
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications find your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Only search engines can interpret an XML sitemap. Although 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 Error Page – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors searching online for your website type in the wrong web address or click on an invalid hyperlink, they are presented with a 404 Not Found error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then is post web content regularly to generate traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take 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 covered in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively and drive traffic sustainably using a WordPress website and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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