Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is post web content on a consistent basis to start generating traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the automation process. 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 site, 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 site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site to automatically attract new visitors whenever you publish fresh content on your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive on a global scale and businesses are looking for any and every advantage they can that can help you increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over the competition. For business owners, an expertly configured website means having an immediate competitive advantage from the very beginning.
Configuration 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 a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to explain the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
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 joke.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Things were moving along in the gizmo assembly plant when everything came to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert immediately walked towards the main control box. After staring at the circuit board for about 5 minutes, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny little hammer and made a very gentle tap near the right edge of the control unit.
Immediately, the assembly line started working once more.
The floor manager was greatly overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The factory manager called the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged such a ludicrous fee for less than five minutes work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived and was placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a website or blog set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating 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 attracting new visitors to your website?)
Although the solution to many challenges may seem ridiculously easy once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which third-party services need to be set up to achieve desired results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to make sure things function to plan, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. It’s not as simple as installing a piece of software, clicking a couple of buttons, or configuring some settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of a number of different components including your web hosting server, your WP site, and various third-party sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we create a simple diagram of the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is tweaking settings in your webhosting account specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic you will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like configuring server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites.
Configuring External Services
The basic concept of adding external sites is that all content will get published to one central location (your site) and from there, it will get automatically distributed to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external platforms have been added to your configuration, content linking back to your site will get automatically added to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and site will then receive additional exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some third-party web properties and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site 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 before configuring your settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmasters 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 diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your Google Webmasters account and site data have been set up, the details can be used to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, marketing activities, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, account information can be added to WordPress using a Google Analytics plugin and instantly sent to other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account has been set up, the information can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to grow a professional online presence for your business.
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 this into your automated web traffic system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media accounts set up before you can 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 get new traffic to your site.
You should set up accounts and profiles with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up and post your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add a feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse page.
There are many different sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your own web traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Site Configuration
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 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 section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(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 specifically configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services section
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section …
(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 visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to read 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 your traffic system is concerned, however, the most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to instantly notify your update services list whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although the settings in this section are 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways your permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using WP permalinks here: Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
Configuring Settings – Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to attract more visitors to your site
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with 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 ignore the importance of website security.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to hackers and botnets.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(WP Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your website’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO 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 pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site using WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing to your site easily using free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to choose which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Traffic Theme Settings – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, some themes also give you built-in options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
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)
Configuring Other WordPress Features For More Traffic
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you are making money online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your site is compliant with all regulations.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
We have created a detailed article about adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
Tags And Categories
Post categories and tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your web pages.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s categories and tags during the Website Planning Stage.
When configuring your site to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Visitor 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 more of your site’s content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although Google will index your site just using 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 results in increased traffic.
404 Page – Don’t Forget To Configure This Too!
When visitors searching for your site enter the wrong web address or click on a link pointing to a page on your site that no longer exists, they will typically be greeted with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up on your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do is post web content on a consistent basis to automatically begin attracting new traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various elements and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website developers months 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 explained in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help small business owners learn how to grow their business online using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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