Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part One of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically bring more web traffic is publish content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started 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 existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration stage of the traffic system. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site so you can automatically start getting traffic whenever you add content to your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With competition making business survival progressively tougher businesses are exploring any and every advantage they believe will help them get better results online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over the competition. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives your business an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Phase Is What Makes All The Difference
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’s one way to understand the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
A Semi-True Story …
Everything is going well in the gizmo-making workshop when suddenly, all equipment stops.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrives and, without uttering a word, goes immediately to the control box. After staring at the wiring board for less than 2 minutes, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer from his shirt pocket and makes a gentle tap near the bottom-right corner of the box.
Immediately, everything comes back to life.
The manager is delighted as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives an invoice for $5,000.
Feeling angry, the factory manager calls the expert. Why had he charged them so much for so little time delivering such minimal amount of 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 it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to ask to be compensated fairly for years spent developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP website set up so all you have to do is publish new content and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be instantly 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?)
While the solution to many challenges often seems ridiculously easy once 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 also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up to achieve desired outcomes
- Which options you need to configure to make sure things will function to plan, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved. This is because it’s not as simple as installing a piece of software, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of many parts such as your web server, your website or blog, and a number of third-party sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your server that affect how your website will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your server 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 unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like 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 error redirections, etc?)
After your 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.
Integration With External Sites
The basic concept of choosing external sites is that all content should be posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get syndicated automatically to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external services have been added to your configuration, content pointing back to your site will be automatically added to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your business will then be given exposure to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some external sites and solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site 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 before configuring your site:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential data, SEO tools and reports about your website.
Once your account is set up, use the details with web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data are set up, tracking information can be added to WordPress using a simple plugin used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account and entering site data with Bing, this information can be used with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, 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 automated traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need your social media accounts set up in order to 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.
You should have pages set up with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose those 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 serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add an RSS feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your page.
There are various solutions that can be incorporated into your traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party services, 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 make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress admin area includes a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated 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 intentionally chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services text area
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section lists only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section …
(Notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
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 visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears 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 website to view 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 main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically ping the update services list when 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 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 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your post permalinks …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
If you need help setting up WordPress permalinks, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
Configuring Settings – WP Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website 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, web security is something you cannot ignore.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to attacks from hackers and botnets.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with members of their online communities can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing buttons to your site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to select which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress – Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, some themes also include built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) allow you to configure settings and options for better traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Additional Configuration Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online, you need to make sure that your website is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online.
(Is Your Website Compliant?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:
Post Tags & Post Categories
WordPress tags & categories help search engines index your website, which improves traffic.
(WordPress post categories help search engines better organize and index your website, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s categories and tags during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, while an XML sitemap is mostly filled with code that only search engine bots can read. Although Google can index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Your WordPress 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching for your website type in the wrong web address or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your website that no longer exist, they will typically be presented with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 Not Found error page) …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect 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 from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do to automatically generate web traffic is add web content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform this process typically takes some web 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 covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section Three
To keep reading about this topic, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven web marketing methods.
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