Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your website into an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to start generating new traffic is add great content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of the blueprint. 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 existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we discuss the configuration phase of this process. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to automatically begin to get new traffic whenever you publish web content to your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as their greatest challenge online. With competition making business survival increasingly more difficult businesses are looking for every advantage they can that can help you get better results online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can be a huge competitive advantage. For business owners, having an expertly configured website means having a significant competitive advantage from the very beginning.
The Configuration Phase Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s a simple way to explain the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
Knowing Where To Tap
Things were running smoothly in the widget assembly factory when suddenly, the equipment ground to a complete stop.
As no one could figure out what was wrong, the manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert headed immediately towards the main control box. After staring at the control unit for what seemed like 5 minutes, the expert then produced a tiny hammer from his utility belt and made a very gentle tap about three cm from the top-left side of the unit.
Immediately, all the machinery inside the assembly line came back to life.
The plant manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager received a bill for $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were charged such an exorbitant fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic consistently to their sites.
How much money did the widget plant stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to be compensated fairly for years spent developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP web site set up and configured so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other traffic-generating online 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 attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although the solution to many challenges is often ridiculously easy in hindsight, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than simply installing a website and configuring basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which services you need to set up to get desired results
- Which settings need to be configured to make sure everything functions as planned, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. This is because it’s not as easy as installing one or two plugins, tweaking some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web hosting server, your WP site, and various external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your web server that affect how your website will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web-hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your site can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like integrating server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various third-party sites and services.
External Accounts
The basic concept of setting up external sites is that all of your content should be posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will automatically get syndicated to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external sites have been added to your system, content with links pointing back to your website gets automatically posted to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and business will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of the sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to speed up the configuration process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts before configuring your WordPress settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
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 data, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account is with Google have been set up, use your account information to automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up Google Analytics, account information can be integrated with WordPress via plugins and and sent to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account and entering site data, this information can be used to automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers both a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to build a professional online presence.
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 at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media accounts set up in order to 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 drive new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts and profile pages with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will cover some of these tools in more detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to many social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add a feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your website.
There are various sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your own traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a 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 WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site For Traffic
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.
Configuring WordPress Settings
The WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As described below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services box
By default, this section displays only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(You can 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 your content gets seen by readers 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 a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website 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 traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically ping your list of update services whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – 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 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways your search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: How To Set Up WordPress Permalinks
Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help your site generate more traffic
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your websites.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to attacks from hackers and bots.
Go here for more information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website …
(Yoast SEO – WP SEO Plugin)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find and index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with members of their own online communities can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your website with free or inexpensive plugins)
You can add social sharing to your website easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you 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 followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which users can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress – Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
Additional Areas Of WordPress To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online (or plan to), it’s important that your site stays compliant with government laws and regulations.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
WordPress Tags And Post Categories
WordPress tags & post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your pages.
(Post categories help search engines better classify and index your web pages, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and post 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 categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find your website 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. Only search engines can understand XML sitemaps. Although Google can index your pages 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.
Your WordPress 404 Page
When online users type in the wrong URL or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your site that no longer exist, they are greeted with an error – page not found message …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do is add web content on a consistent basis to attract more web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform this phase of the traffic automation process typically takes some website professionals a long time to acquire.
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 covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive tutorial series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online using a WordPress website and proven online marketing strategies.
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