Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article 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 site, all you have to do to automatically start generating new web traffic is publish new content regularly!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase of this process. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we discuss the configuration phase of this process. We explain how to configure a WordPress site so you can bring web traffic automatically just by posting fresh content on your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business getting increasingly more competitive worldwide, it’s worth exploring any and every advantage available to get better results online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage. Having an expertly configured website gives your business a significant advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Stage Is What Makes 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 builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to understand the main difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a story.
Knowing Where To Tap
All was humming along in the widget assembly line when suddenly, things stopped.
As no one could figure out what happened, the manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert went immediately to the main control box. After staring silently at the box for 2 minutes, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy hammer from his tool box and made a very gentle tap about 1 cm from the top-right corner of the unit.
Immediately, every machine in the factory floor started working again.
The manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The manager rang back the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived and was placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for investing years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a website or blog set up so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
Although the solution to many challenges often seems quite easy once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to get desired outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to ensure that everything will work to plan, etc.
(Generating new 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 and complicated. This is because it’s not as simple as installing a plugin, configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of many components including your web hosting server, your website or blog, and various external sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a better look at what’s involved.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your site can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites.
Integration With External Accounts
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all of your content gets published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it then gets distributed automatically to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external services to your network, content pointing back to your website gets automatically syndicated to search, social and aggregator sites. Your site will receive exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some third-party sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings to help 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 or blog)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your account and site data are set up, the information can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, marketing activities, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, you can add visitor tracking code to all of your pages in WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and send data instantly to various other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account and site details are set up, this information can be used with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your web traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media accounts before you can 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site.
You should set up accounts and profile pages with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can You can syndicate your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools (we discuss some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to many social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add an RSS feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your website.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate 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 strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site For Traffic
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 key areas.
WordPress Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
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 …
(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 visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content 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.
The most important setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to notify various update services whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
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 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)
Permalinks
Permalinks enable WordPress to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways your site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, refer to this tutorial: Changing WordPress Permalinks
Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more visitors to your site
WordPress 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. Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot ignore the importance of securing your website.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and bots.
Go here for more information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving improving how search engines like Google find and index your web pages …
(WordPress Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to find, classify and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with others online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social plugins allow you to specify which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring Settings – WordPress Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring layout and design elements of your site, many themes also provide built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Additional Sections To Configure For Better Traffic
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online, it’s important that your website remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
We have written a detailed article on how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website here:
Post Tags & Categories
Tags and post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your pages.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and post categories should be reviewed and set up during the Website Planning Process.
When considering ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories you have set up.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A visitor site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites discover your site’s content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
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 plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Forget To Configure This Too!
When visitors enter the wrong URL into their browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your site that no longer exist, they are greeted with an error page (known as a 404 error page) …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up on your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your site fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do is post fresh content on a regular basis to automatically begin bringing new traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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