Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is add content consistently to automatically start attracting web traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. 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 site, and what to do if your existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we discuss the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. The focus of this section is to help you understand why an expertly configured WordPress site is different. You will also learn how much work is required to make sure that when everything is fully configured, visitors will automatically start flowing simply by adding web content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive worldwide and businesses are exploring any and every opportunity they can to improve their results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge advantage over other competitors. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start from the moment their website is launched.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
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 its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to explain the main difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take additional labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this here’s a story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Everything is going well in the gizmo-making workshop when suddenly, things stop working.
No one can figure out what’s gone wrong and so the floor manager decides to call in an expert.
The expert arrives soon afterward and, without saying a word, immediately walks towards the main control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for no more than 3 minutes, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer and makes a gentle tap near the right corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything springs back to life.
The floor manager is relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager receives a bill for $5,000.
Confused and outraged, the factory manager picks up the phone and calls the expert. Why had he charged them such a ridiculously high fee for less than five minutes work? He then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors to their sites.
How much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for spending years developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WP site set up so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social networks and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be immediately 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 experts often make complicated things look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than simply installing a website and configuring a few basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up to get certain results
- Which settings need to be configured to make sure everything will function 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 technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. This is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a plugin, clicking a button … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration phase is a process that involves your web server, your site, and various external sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simple diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your website may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like configuring server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites and services.
External Services
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all content gets published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it gets distributed automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external platforms to your network, content pointing back to your website will be automatically published on your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of these external sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site to speed up the configuration process 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 site’s settings:
Google Search Console
(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 useful information, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your Google Webmasters account and site details are set up, use your information to automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up Google Analytics, you can add traffic monitoring code to all of your web pages in WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and feed data automatically to many other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account has been with Bing are set up, you can use your information with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, 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 business presence online.
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 with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated traffic system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts in order to integrate these with 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and profile pages with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can post your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your account.
There are various platforms that can be incorporated into your own web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section contains only one entry …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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 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 to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users 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 read the rest of the content from summaries, 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 ticked or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly 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 …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion Settings
Although discussion settings 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your permalink URLs …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
We have created a detailed tutorial on using permalinks in WordPress here: Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to improve traffic generation
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, website security is something you simply cannot ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
Go here to learn more:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(WP Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with their social networks can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your site easily using WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing buttons to your site using free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social sharing plugins let you specify which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update 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 site which users can unlock by sharing your page.
WP Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a free theme) can be configured for improved traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Additional Steps
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business 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 website is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article about how to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website or blog here:
Tags & Categories
WordPress post tags & post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your website.
(Categories help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Stage.
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 displays all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. 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.
Configure Your Site’s 404 Page Not Found
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on a link pointing to a destination on your site that no longer exists, they will typically be greeted with an error page (known as a 404 Not Found page) …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then to start driving web traffic is publish new content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website professionals months to learn.
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 section of the series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively with a WordPress-driven website and proven web marketing methods.
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