Tag: WordPress Traffic Blueprint

Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using WordPress.

In Part 1 of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …

(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is publish content on a consistent basis to start generating more traffic!)

In Part Two, we discussed critical setup decisions. We explained 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 website has been 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 discuss the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. We explain how to configure a WordPress site to start to get visitors automatically whenever you add fresh content to your website.

WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase

Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business becoming increasingly more competitive worldwide, it’s worth learning about any and every advantage available to get better results online.

The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over the competition. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives you a flying start and an immediate competitive advantage online.

The Configuration Process Is The Difference

There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.

Here is a simple way to explain the main difference:

With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence and an automated online business marketing system!

(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and 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 process into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.

Let’s illustrate this with a little story.

Knowing Where To Tap

All is going fine in the gizmo assembly line when things suddenly comes to a halt.

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

The expert arrives shortly afterward and, without saying a word, walks directly to the control box. After staring silently at the box for 5 minutes, the expert then produces a tiny little hammer from his utility belt and makes a very gentle tap about 3 cm from the right edge of the unit.

Immediately, every machine springs back to life.

The plant manager is filled with joy as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.

A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives an invoice for the amount of $5,000.

Bewildered, the manager dials the expert. Why were they charged such a ridiculously high fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work? He then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.

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

The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive new traffic to their sites.

In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the 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 the right to demand fair compensation for having invested years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to fix a costly problem?

Similarly, if you could have a site set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networks and dozens of other web properties would be immediately 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?)

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

Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than simply installing a website and configuring a few basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:

• Which programs you need to install to get specific functionalities on your site.
• Which third-party accounts need to be set up and activated to get specific outcomes
• Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to ensure that everything works as you have imagined, etc.

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

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

Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your server, your web site, and various third-party sites and/or online services …

(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)

If all the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …

(A simplified diagram of all the steps involved in the configuration phase)

Let’s take a better look at what’s involved.

Your Web Server

We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for website installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is tweaking settings and options in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …

(During the configuration stage, your web-hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)

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

This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like server-level spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess and error page redirections, etc …

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

After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these, the next step is to set up and configure a number of third-party sites or online services.

Third-Party Sites

The idea behind adding external sites is that all of your content will be published from one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will radiate outwards automatically to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.

After adding these external platforms to your traffic system, content pointing back to your site will be automatically added to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your site will then receive exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.

Some of these third-party sites will need to be set up before configuring your site’s settings to help 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 Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with essential information, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.

After setting up your account, this information can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.

Google Analytics

(Google Analytics)

Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.

Once your Google Analytics account is set up, visitor tracking information can be integrated with WordPress using a Google Analytics plugin and and sent to various other useful applications.

Bing Webmaster Tools

(Bing Data And Tools)

Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account and entering site data, this information can be used to automate traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.

WordPress.com

(WordPress.com)

As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers both a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to build a professional online 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 explain how to integrate this into your web traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.

Social Media

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

You will need to set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site.

Make sure you have set up accounts and profiles with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.

There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with 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.

(You can post your content to many social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)

Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.

There are a number of online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are paid services.

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 is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your social feed.

There are various sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.

Once you have configured your web server and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.

WordPress – Configuring Your Website

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

Let’s go over some of the important areas.

WordPress – Global Settings

Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …

(WordPress menu – Settings)

General Settings

Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …

(Settings Menu – General Settings)

Writing

The Writing Settings section contains an important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …

(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 services entered into the Update Services text area

By default, when WordPress is installed, this section lists only one entry …

(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)

You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …

(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

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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 web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog 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.

As far as traffic is concerned, however, the main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.

Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly ping various update services whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting 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 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 Section)

Permalinks

Permalinks enable WordPress to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …

(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings Screen)

The examples below show some of the ways your permalinks can be configured …

(Configuring permalink URLs)

If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO

Plugins

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

Let’s take a brief 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 site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is safe from being attacked by hackers.

(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)

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

Go here for more information:

• How To Protect Your WP Blog From Hackers And Bots

SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO

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

(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help increase traffic by improving your website’s SEO)

A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your site’s search engine optimization. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to find, crawl and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

WordPress Social Sharing Plugins

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

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

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

Many social share plugins allow you to select which 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 shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which users can unlock by sharing your page.

WordPress – Theme Settings

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

For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also give you built-in options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …

(Many themes can be configured for improved traffic results)

With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as clicking a button …

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

WordPress Traffic Configuration – Additional Sections

Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.

These include:

Website Legal 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 when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.

If you are making money online, it’s important that your site stays compliant with regulatory agencies.

(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)

If you need help understanding how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website, go here:

• The Importance Of Having A Legally Compliant Website

Categories And Tags

Post tags and post categories help search engines better classify and index your website, which helps to increase traffic.

(WordPress categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.)

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

When configuring your website to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.

Visitor Site Map

A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications find more of your online content …

(A site map is not just great for visitors, but 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 link to all other content on your site and provide visitors with a logical map of how your content is organized, while XML sitemaps are code that only search bots can interpret. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.

404 Error Page – Don’t Forget This!

When visitors searching for your site type in the wrong URL into their browser or click on a hyperlink pointing to a destination on your website that no longer exists, they are greeted with a 404 error page …

(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)

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

(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)

Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.

WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary

Once your site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do is publish content on a consistent basis to start generating more 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 components and external web properties …

(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)

The kind of expertise required to perform the configuration process typically takes many web developers months 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 article in the series.

This is the end of Part 3

To read more, click on the link below:

• Website Traffic Blueprint Part Four – Learn How To Create An Automated Traffic Generation Machine

This article is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping small business owners learn how to grow their business online and drive traffic organically using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.

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