Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 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 automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is add fresh content on a consistent basis to begin bringing traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the blueprint. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. We explain how to configure a WordPress site so you can ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing just by consistently posting content to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive worldwide and are exploring every opportunity they can to get better results online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand is a huge competitive advantage. With an expertly configured website, your business has a flying start from the moment your website is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to understand the differences:
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 professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take more labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Everything was humming along in the gizmo-making factory when suddenly, the machinery ground to a halt.
As no one could figure out what went wrong, the manager decided to call in an expert.
Soon afterward, the expert arrived and, without saying a word, went immediately to the main control box. After staring silently at the electronic components for less than 2 minutes, the expert then produced a tiny little hammer from his utility belt and made a very gentle tap about one inch from the top-left side of the unit.
Immediately, the machines began to work again.
The manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received a request of payment for services totalling $5,000.
The manager picked up the phone and called the expert, demanding to know why they were charged such a ludicrous fee for so little time delivering such a minimal amount of work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive new traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for spending years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to assess and avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress blog configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other traffic-generating 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 experts often make difficult situations and problems look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party services need to be set up and activated to achieve specific results
- Which options you need to configure to ensure that everything will function the way you expect, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing one or two plugins, configuring some settings in your dashboard area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many different components including your web server, your website or blog, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your web server that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your business can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like implementing server-level spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step is to set up and configure a number of external sites and/or online solutions.
External Sites And Accounts – Configuration
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all content gets posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it syndicates automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external services into your system, content pointing back to your site is automatically posted to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and site will be given additional exposure to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some sites will need to have accounts 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, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with useful data, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site data, use the details to integrate and automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress 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, organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your account, account data can be easily integrated with WordPress using a simple plugin and and fed to various other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account and site data with Bing are set up, you can use your account information to automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers both a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your web traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic 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 visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts set up with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up and post your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick those that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we will look at some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary 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 site that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your social feed.
There are many different sites and platforms you can add to your web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress 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 WordPress Settings
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
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 specifically chosen to discourage 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 listed …
(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
***
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 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 shows up in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to view the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to instantly notify your list of update services when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
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 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your permalink URLs …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality to your site, 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
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your websites is something you simply cannot ignore.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and bots.
Go here for more details:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(WP Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with members of their own social communities can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing features to your site easily with WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily using WordPress plugins.
Most social share plugins let you choose which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Settings – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring layout and design aspects of your site, many themes also include built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) can be configured for improved traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as clicking a few buttons to configure your options and enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Other Configuration Features For WordPress Traffic
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of business online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Categories & Post Tags
Categories and tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your website.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your website.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s post categories and tags during the Website Planning Phase.
When considering ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories that have been set up.
Site Map
A site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover more of your online content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although Google will index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When visitors searching online for your site type in the wrong URL or click on an invalid hyperlink, they will typically be greeted with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you 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 have to do to automatically attract traffic is publish web content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some web professionals months 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 addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help small business owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
Get Notified When New WordPress Tutorials Are Published – Subscribe To Our Site!
***
"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com
***