Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically bring more traffic is publish fresh content consistently!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured in order to automatically begin driving traffic as you start adding new content on your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as their greatest challenge online. With business becoming so much more competitive, it’s worth learning about any advantage available to improve your performance online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over other competitors. Having an expertly configured website gives you a flying start and an immediate competitive advantage online.
The Configuration Process Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to understand the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence and an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only is more labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Allow me to illustrate this with an amusing story.
Knowing Where To Tap
All is going well in the widget manufacturing plant when all of a sudden, things grinds to a halt.
No one can figure out what’s gone wrong and so the manager decides to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walks immediately towards the control box. After staring silently at the schematics for less than 2 minutes, the expert then takes out a little hammer from his pocket and makes a very gentle tap near the top-left corner of the control unit.
Immediately, every machine starts working once again.
The plant manager is delighted as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Angrily, the factory manager calls the expert. Demanding to know why they have been charged such a large amount of money for less than 5 minutes work, he promptly 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 main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped working and no one on the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WP web site fully set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating 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 driving traffic to your website?)
Although the solution to many challenges often seems ridiculously simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than installing a website and configuring basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party services need to be set up to achieve certain results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to make sure everything will function as planned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved. It’s not as simple as installing and configuring a plugin, tweaking some settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web server, your site, and a number of 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 flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Configuring Your Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your web hosting account that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic you will attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwanted traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like implementing spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites.
External Accounts
The purpose of adding external sites is that all content will get posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will syndicate automatically to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external sites have been added to your configuration, content linked back to your site will get automatically added to search, social and aggregator sites. Your site will then receive increased exposure online, helping you tap into a new audience and source of traffic.
Some sites will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress settings 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:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of essential information, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account and site details with Google Search Console have been set up, use the details with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your account and site details, visitor tracking information can be integrated with WordPress via a Google Analytics plugin used with other applications and reporting tools.
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 with Bing Webmaster Tools, use this information to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your automated traffic system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social media accounts set up 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 bring new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will review some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free 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 – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your page.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your own traffic system. 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.
After you have configured your web server and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress Site 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 of the important points.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress takes care of the rest …
(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 Settings
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 displays to users in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your site 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 your traffic system is concerned, however, the main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to automatically notify various update services whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – 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 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)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings enable WordPress to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using WP permalinks here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is completely immune from cyber-attacks.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
For more details, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages easy for search engines like Google and Bing to index …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with friends and members of their social networks can help boost traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your site with WordPress plugins)
There are many free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social sharing plugins let you choose which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WP Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout aspects of your site, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your content is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Configuring Other WordPress Sections For More Traffic
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online, it’s important that your website is compliant with all legal requirements.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
To learn more about why it’s important to have a legally compliant website, see this article:
Post Tags And Post Categories
Post tags and post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your web pages.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your web pages.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s post categories and tags during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites discover your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Only search engine bots can understand an XML sitemap. Although search engines like Google will index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – Don’t Forget To Configure It!
When visitors type in the wrong URL into their browser or click on links pointing to destinations on your website that no longer exist, they will typically be presented with an error page (known as a 404 page) …
(A 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do to automatically bring traffic is add great content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The expertise required to perform this process can take many website developers a long time to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is covered in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part Three
To continue reading about this topic, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping website owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively with a WordPress website and proven online marketing strategies.
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