Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is publish great content on a consistent basis to attract new traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to get started 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 existing site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will explain why an expertly configured WordPress site is different, and just what type of work is required to ensure that when all is fully configured, visitors will automatically start flowing when you begin to post fresh content consistently to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Also, the business landscape is becoming ever more competitive on a global scale and businesses are looking for any and every advantage they can that can help you get better results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start as soon as their website is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to explain the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is more labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let me illustrate this with a story.
A Semi-True Story …
Things are working according to schedule in the gizmo-making workshop when everything comes to a sudden stop.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the plant manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert immediately heads towards the control box. After staring silently at the box for what seems like 5 minutes, the expert then produces a teensy-weensy little hammer and makes a very gentle tap near the left side of the unit.
Immediately, all the machinery springs back to life.
The floor manager is relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a request of payment for services totalling $5,000.
Bewildered and confused, the manager dials the expert. Why had they had been charged such an exorbitant fee for less than 5 minutes work? He then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives and is placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic consistently to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WP website or blog set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social followers from sites like Facebook and LinkedIn and dozens of other 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 website?)
While experts often make complicated things look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than simply installing a website and configuring a few settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which services need to be set up to achieve specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to ensure that things work as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and complicated. It’s not as easy as installing and configuring a solution, clicking a button, or configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your server, your website or blog, and various external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we were to create a simplified flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these areas.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your site may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like configuring server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, 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 external sites and online services.
Configuring External Web Properties
The concept behind adding external sites is that all of your content should be published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, radiate outwards to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external services have been added to your configuration, content pointing back to your website will be automatically added to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social media sites, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content will then receive increased exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of these web properties and online solutions will need to be 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, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account, this information can be used to automate traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic results, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, you can add visitor tracking information to all of your pages in WordPress via plugins and feed data automatically to many other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account and site details with Bing Webmaster Tools have been set up, use this information to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers users a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated traffic system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your various social media accounts 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 accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts set up with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will review some of these tools in greater detail during the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add a feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are various technologies and third-party applications you can add to your web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Global Settings – WordPress
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 visitors 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 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 content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to get 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 traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to automatically notify your list of update services when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
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 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)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, see this step-by-step tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to improve traffic generation
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website 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, 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 blog invisible to botnets and hackers.
More information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web content easy for search engines to find and index …
(WordPress Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it allows you to configure 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 online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing to your website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to choose which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress – Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring layout and design elements of your site, many themes also give you options for improving SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes can be configured for better traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other Sections Of WordPress For More Traffic Flow
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance 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 things that can go wrong as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help understanding how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your website or blog, go here:
Post Categories And Tags
Post tags & post categories help search engines better classify and index your website, which helps to increase traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your web pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s tags and categories should be reviewed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Phases.
When looking at ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags that have been set up.
HTML Site Map
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications discover your online content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, while an XML sitemap contains code that only search engines can read. Although Google can index your site just from 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.
Your WordPress 404 Page
When online users type in the wrong web address into their browser or click on an invalid hyperlink, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(A 404 Page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured into a useful source of traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your website has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to generate more web traffic is publish new content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some web 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 you can. This step is explained in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Blueprint 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 designed to help you learn how to grow your business online with a WordPress website and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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