Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to drive more web traffic is publish web content regularly!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. 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 website, and what to do if your website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured in order to ensure that traffic will automatically start flowing whenever you post web content on your website.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive and are exploring any and every advantage available to improve their performance and results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage over the competition. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off with a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
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 its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to explain the differences:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Let me illustrate this point with an amusing story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All was going fine in the widget assembly line when things ground to a sudden stop.
As no one could figure out what happened, the manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
The expert arrived soon afterward and walked directly to the control box. After staring at the wires and circuitry for less than 5 minutes, the expert then took out a teensy-weensy hammer from his utility belt and made a single tap about one inch from the right side of the control unit.
Immediately, everything sprang to life.
The manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The manager rang back the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged such an exorbitant fee for less than five minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the factory stand to lose when the machines stopped functioning and no one on the business was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for having spent years building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your website configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networks and dozens of other web properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
While 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 requires more than installing a website and configuring basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party accounts need to be set up to get desired results
- Which options need to be configured in order to ensure that things will work as envisioned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. It’s not just about installing a solution, clicking on a button or two, or configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of many parts such as your web hosting server, your site, and a number of third-party sites and online services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your web-hosting account that affect how your website will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web 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 all about evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
Once your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and/or online services.
Configuring External Web Properties
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all content will get published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get syndicated automatically to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external platforms have been added to your traffic system, content linked back to your site gets automatically published on these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social networks, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and business will benefit from exposure online, helping your business tap into a whole new audience and traffic source.
Some external sites and solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings to 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 settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important data, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account is with Google have been set up, this information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your account, your account data can be easily integrated with WordPress using plugins used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account and site details are set up, this information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers users a hosted and a self-hosted option. 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 a number of useful tools, which various 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 web traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social media accounts before you can configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts set up with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we will look at some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
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 displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are various platforms that can be added to your web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to 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 web server and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As stated below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services section
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section includes only one entry …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 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 influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website 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 feature is enabled or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to automatically notify various update services when new posts get 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 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
To learn more about setting up WP permalinks, go here: How To Set Up WordPress Permalinks
WordPress Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to improve traffic generation
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is completely immune from cyber-attacks.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find, classify and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are loads of social sharing plugins available for WordPress users.
Most social sharing plugins let you specify which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, some themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your content is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Additional Configuration
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your site is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
WordPress Post Tags & Post Categories
Post categories & tags help search engines index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.
(WordPress categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Phases.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find more of your site’s 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 not the same thing. Although search engines like Google can index your site 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 can result in increased traffic.
Configure Your 404 Error Page
When online users enter the wrong web address into their browser or click on a link pointing to a destination on your site that no longer exists, they are greeted with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 page can be configured into a useful source of traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from 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 post great content regularly to begin attracting traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge required to perform the configuration process typically takes some web professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have 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 article in our series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help small business owners learn how to grow their business online with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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