Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One 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 automatically begin attracting web traffic is add content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we discussed critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how 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 automation process. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site to automatically begin attracting new visitors when you start posting content on your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive worldwide and are looking for any and every advantage they believe will increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over the competition. With an expertly configured WordPress site, your business has a significant advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here is a simple way to understand the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
A Semi-True Story …
All is going well in the gizmo manufacturing plant when all of a sudden, the equipment grinds to a halt.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the plant manager decides to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert heads directly towards the control box. After staring at the circuit board for 2 minutes or less, the expert then produces a little hammer from his shirt pocket and makes a very gentle tap near the left edge of the box.
Immediately, everything comes back to life.
The manager is grateful and relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager receives an invoice for the amount of $5,000.
Angry and confused, the factory manager rings the expert. Demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a large amount of money for less than 5 minutes work, he then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for investing years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WP web site set up and configured so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(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 ridiculously easy in hindsight, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring settings for clients. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which services need to be set up to achieve certain outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured to make sure processes will work the way you expect, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved and complicated. It’s not just about installing and configuring one or two plugins, tweaking some settings in your admin area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web hosting server, your site, and various external sites or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we create a simplified diagram showing the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a better look at these areas.
Configuring Your 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). We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your web server that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your webhosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your business may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like integrating server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites or online services.
Configuring External Services
The basic concept of adding external sites is that all of your content is posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it gets automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external platforms into your system, content with links pointing back to your website will be automatically published on search, social and aggregator sites. Your website receives increased exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site’s 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 site:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of useful information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your Google Search Console account and entering site data, you can use this information to integrate and automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your up your Google Analytics account and entered your site data, you can add traffic tracking code to all of your pages in WordPress via a plugin and send data instantly to many other useful applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account is set up, the details can be used to integrate and automate traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan 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 automated web traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media and social bookmarking accounts in order to configure these as part of 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 bring new traffic to your site.
Set up accounts and profiles with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add an RSS feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your social feed.
There are various technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your own traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
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 configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains an important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Screen)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
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 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 shows up in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your site to get 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 your traffic system is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly ping various update services when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion Settings
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 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 Screen)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
If you need help setting up permalinks, refer to this tutorial: How To Set Up WordPress Permalinks
WordPress – Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress 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, securing your website is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to hackers and botnets.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving how search engines like Google and Bing find and index your website …
(WP Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s search engine optimization. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with their networks can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your website easily using WordPress plugins)
There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins available for WordPress users.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to choose which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom 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 visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Traffic Theme Settings – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, some themes also give you options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
Additional Sections To Configure For Improved Traffic Results
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your website is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
To learn more about how to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website or blog, go here:
WordPress Post Tags & Categories
Post categories & tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(WordPress categories help search engines classify and index your pages, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and categories should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
When configuring your website to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags you have set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites discover more of your online 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 different things. Only search engine bots can read an XML sitemap. 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), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – An Additional Source Of Web Traffic!
When visitors searching online for your website type in the wrong URL into their browser or click on an invalid link, they are greeted with a 404 Not Found error page …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to automatically begin attracting new web traffic is post great content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. 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 on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress website or blog and proven online marketing methods.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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