Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this 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 or blog, all you have to do is post web content consistently to automatically attract new traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on 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 website, and what to do if your existing site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration phase of the traffic system. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to ensure that new visitors will automatically start flowing whenever you publish fresh content on your website.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business getting increasingly more competitive worldwide, it’s worth learning about any and every opportunity you can to improve your own performance and results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand is a huge competitive advantage. For business owners, an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Process Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to describe the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing anecdote.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Everything was moving along in the widget plant when things ground to a sudden halt.
As no one could figure out what was wrong, the manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately went to the control box. After staring silently at the electronic components for 3 minutes or so, the expert then produced a little hammer from his shirt pocket and made a gentle tap about one inch from the bottom-right side of the unit.
Immediately, everything sprang back to life.
The floor manager was grateful and relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The manager picked up the phone and called the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged so much for less than 5 minutes work. He then 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 number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to be compensated fairly for years spent developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly repair a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress site configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social followers from Facebook and LinkedIn and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be automatically 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?)
While many experts often make complex situations and problems look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few settings. It 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 accounts need to be set up to get desired outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to ensure that processes will run exactly as you have planned, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. It’s not just about installing and configuring a solution, clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration stage is a complex process that involves your server, your WordPress site, and various third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram of the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Configuring The Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your website will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like implementing spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
Once your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites and services.
External Sites
The purpose of adding external sites is that all of your content gets posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it then gets distributed automatically to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external platforms into your system, content pointing back to your website gets automatically fed to these platforms. Your content and site will be exposed to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site 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 before configuring your site:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with useful information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site data with Google Webmasters, the account details can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic results, SEO, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data have been set up, traffic tracking information can be added to WordPress via a Google Analytics plugin and and fed to various other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account and entering site details, you can use this information to automate traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, 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 automated web traffic system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your various social media accounts in order to 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 and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and pages set up with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
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 RebelMouse account.
There are various technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog For Traffic
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 key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Section)
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 purposely 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 field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section and WordPress takes care of the rest …
(You can 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 readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to view the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to notify all the update services you have listed whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings Screen)
Here are some of the options for configuring your permalink URLs …
(Configuring post permalinks)
For a detailed tutorial about setting up WP permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of 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 look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic
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, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of website security.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and bots.
Go here for more details:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(WP SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. 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 your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing to your website with free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins let you choose which 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 shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress – Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout elements of your website, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as clicking a few buttons to enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic – Additional Configuration Steps
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, 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 as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your site is compliant with all regulations.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
We have written a detailed article about adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
WordPress Categories & Tags
Post categories and post tags help search engines index your web pages, which helps you get more traffic.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your pages.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s categories and tags should be set up during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories you have set up.
Add A Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites 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. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong web address into their web browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they are presented with an error page (known as a 404 page) …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured to funnel visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do is post content on a consistent basis to begin bringing web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise required to perform this phase of the traffic automation process typically takes some website developers months to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as you can. This step is addressed in the next section of the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping small business owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively with a WordPress-driven website and proven web marketing methods.
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