Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is add new content on a consistent basis to automatically begin attracting new traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. We explained the best way to start 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 website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic system. We will help you understand why an expertly configured WordPress site is different. You will also understand how much work is required to ensure that when all is set up and fully configured, new traffic will automatically start flowing when you start posting new content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic 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 worldwide and businesses are looking for any opportunity they can to increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge advantage over the competition. With an expertly configured WordPress site, you have a flying start and an immediate advantage online.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here is a simple way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence plus an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and 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 type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing anecdote.
Knowing Where To Tap
All is going well in the widget manufacturing plant when production suddenly comes to a halt.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the plant manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrives and immediately goes towards the main control box. After staring silently at the control unit for 3 minutes, the expert then produces a tiny hammer from his tool box and makes a single tap about 1 cm from the bottom-right edge of the unit.
Immediately, the machinery comes back to life.
The plant manager is relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager receives a request of payment for services rendered for the amount of $5,000.
Puzzled and confused, the factory manager rings the expert. Why had they had been charged so much for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped working and no one in the business was able to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for having invested years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your site fully set up so all you have to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other online 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 driving traffic to your website?)
Although many experts often make complicated solutions look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to work things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party accounts need to be set up to achieve specific outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured to ensure that processes will work as envisioned, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. It’s not as easy as installing a plugin, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your web site, and a number of external sites or online 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 something like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your web server that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web server 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 website can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like server-level spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various third-party sites and online services.
External Sites
The idea behind choosing external sites is that all of your content should be posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, syndicate automatically to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external sites to your configuration, content with links pointing back to your site is automatically syndicated to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and website will then receive exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these external sites 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, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up:
Google Search Console
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential information, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site data, this information can be used with traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account and site details, visitor tracking data can be easily integrated with WordPress via a simple Google Analytics plugin and automatically sent to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account with Bing Webmaster Tools, the account details can be used to integrate and automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated traffic system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your various social media 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and pages set up with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can You can post your content to many social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we cover some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse page.
There are various technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Site 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 key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Global Settings – 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 discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, this section displays only one entry …
(Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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 on this page can have an influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to read the rest of the content from excerpts, 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 ticked or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly notify your update services list whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
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 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)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings enable your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your permalinks …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help improve traffic generation
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with 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, web security is something you cannot afford to ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your web pages …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help increase traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social share 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 social plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by sharing your page.
Theme Settings
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, many themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for better traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a few buttons to configure your settings and enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Additional Sections Of WordPress To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with 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 make money online, you need to make sure that your site remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
We have created a detailed article on the importance of having a compliant website here:
Tags & Post Categories
Post tags and categories help search engines classify and index your pages, which helps you get more traffic.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your web pages.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s post categories and tags should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Stage.
When looking at ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories that have been set up.
Visitor Site Map
A site map that lists all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find more of your web content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Only search engine bots can interpret XML sitemaps. Although search engines like Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin 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.
404 Page – Don’t Forget This!
When visitors type in the wrong web address or click on a hyperlink pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they are greeted with a 404 error page …
(A 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web 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 allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to generate traffic is add great content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise required to perform this phase of the traffic automation process typically takes some website developers 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 explained in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part Three
To continue reading, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping small business owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively using a WordPress-powered website and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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