Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new visitors automatically to your site using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to attract more traffic is post great content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the blueprint. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to bring new visitors automatically just by adding web content on your website.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as their greatest challenge online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive and are exploring any advantage they believe will increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the very beginning.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s one way to explain the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
Knowing Where To Tap
Everything was going well in the widget workshop when all of a sudden, all machines came to a complete stop.
As no one could figure out what happened, the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
Soon afterward, the expert arrived and, without uttering a word, headed out directly to the control box. After staring at the wires and circuitry for less than 3 minutes, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy hammer from his pocket and made a very gentle tap near the right corner of the control unit.
Immediately, everything started working once again.
The floor manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager received a request of payment for services rendered for the sum of $5,000.
The manager called the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a ludicrous fee for less than 5 minutes work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the equipment stopped working and no one in the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for having invested years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a web site configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social media and dozens of other web properties would be immediately 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?)
While the solution to many problems may seem ridiculously easy in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than just installing a website and configuring site settings for a client. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which 3rd-party services need to be set up to achieve desired results
- Which options need to be configured in order to make sure everything functions to plan, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. This is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a solution, clicking on a button or two, or configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different parts such as your web hosting server, your website, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your hosting account that affect how you will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server 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 can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like implementing spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites and services.
External Services
The idea behind choosing external sites is that all of your content will be published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will radiate outwards automatically to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external platforms into your setup, content linking back to your site will get automatically added to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your business will receive exposure online, helping your business tap into a new audience and source of traffic.
Some third-party sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings to help speed up the process 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 Search Console)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with essential information, tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site data, you can use the details with web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your up your Google Analytics account and site data has been entered, traffic monitoring information can be added to all pages in WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins used with other applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account and entering site details with Bing Webmaster Tools, your account details can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers users a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts before you can integrate these with 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 get new visitors to your site.
You should have profiles with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can You can post your content to loads of social sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse social feed.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress admin area includes a Settings section 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 affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(You can 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
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog 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 checkbox is ticked or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to automatically ping the list of update services whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global 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 sites linked to from your posts, 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)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow your site to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up WP permalinks, go here: How To Set Up Your WordPress Permalinks
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to improve traffic generation
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 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 website security.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and botnets.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your web pages …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website 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 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 shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which users can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring Settings – WP Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure For Increased Traffic Results
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website 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 cause serious damage to your business when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you do business online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:
Post Categories And Tags
Tags & post categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps you get more traffic.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your web pages.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories you have set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A 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 tools discover your website 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 two different things. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from 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.
Your Site’s 404 Page
When visitors searching online for your site enter the wrong web address into their browser or click on a dead hyperlink, they will typically be presented with an error page …
(A 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error 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 plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your site fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is publish content regularly to automatically start generating new web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and knowledge required to perform this stage of the traffic automation process can take many website developers months 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 article in our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business with a WordPress website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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