Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generating machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically attract more traffic is post new content consistently!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We helped you understand 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 site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration phase of this process. You will understand what makes an expertly configured site different from a professionally configured site, and just what type of work needs to be done to make sure that when all is fully set up and configured, you can automatically start bringing web traffic when you add new content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Also, the business landscape is becoming ever more competitive on a global scale and businesses are researching any advantage they believe will help them get better results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage over the competition. With an expertly configured WordPress site, you have a significant competitive advantage from the very beginning.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take additional work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here’s a story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All was moving along in the widget plant when things came to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what was wrong and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert headed out immediately to the control box. After staring silently at the schematics for about 5 minutes, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy hammer from his pocket and made a single tap near the right edge of the unit.
Immediately, everything returned to normal.
The floor manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
The factory manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay so much for less than 5 minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped working and no one on the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to ask to be compensated fairly for investing years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a site set up and configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be immediately 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 site?)
While experts often make difficult situations and problems look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring settings for clients. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up and activated to achieve desired results
- Which options need to be configured in order to make sure things work as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and time-consuming. It’s not as easy as installing and configuring one or two plugins, clicking a button … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many components such as your web hosting server, your web site, and various third-party sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your web server that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your site can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites and services.
3rd-Party Sites Configuration
The basic concept of setting up external sites is that all content should be published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will radiate outwards to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external sites into your setup, content linking back to your website will be automatically published on these platforms. Your website receives increased exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these third-party web properties and online services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress settings 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:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with important information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your Google Webmasters account, you can use the account information with web traffic settings 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 results, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your account, your account information can be added to all of your pages in WordPress using plugins used with other applications and reporting tools.
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, the information can be used with traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social 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 get new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts set up with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(There are lots of social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse page.
There are many different platforms you can incorporate into your own web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
WordPress Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have specifically configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section includes only one entry …
(WordPress Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress takes care of the rest …
(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 visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up 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 or blog to view the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to instantly notify the update services list whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(Global Settings – 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 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow your site to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
If you need help setting up WordPress permalinks, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Traffic Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic to your site
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with 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, you simply cannot ignore the importance of web security.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing features to your website easily with free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website using free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social share plugins let you 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 shares), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Settings – Configuration
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 include built-in options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) allow you to configure settings and options for improved traffic results)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic – Additional Configuration
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you are making money online, you need to make sure that your site is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
If you need help understanding how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your site, go here:
WordPress Categories & Tags
Post tags & post categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which improves traffic.
(Categories help search engines better classify and index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and categories should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A 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 tools discover 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 things. Although Google can index your site just using 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 Site’s 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching online for your website type in the wrong URL or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your website that no longer exist, they are presented with a 404 Not Found page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do is publish content on a regular basis to automatically drive more web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some website developers a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is addressed in the next section of the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping site owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively and drive traffic organically using a WordPress website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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