Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is post new content on a regular basis to drive web traffic!)
In Part Two, 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 things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. You will understand what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different. You will also learn how much work needs to be done to ensure that when all is set up and fully configured, you can drive web traffic automatically when you begin to post content on a consistent basis on your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive worldwide and are exploring any and every advantage they believe will improve their performance online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a huge competitive advantage. With an expertly configured WordPress site, you have an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s a simple way to describe the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this here’s a story.
Knowing Where To Tap
All is going just fine in the gizmo factory when everything comes to a sudden stop.
No one can figure out what is wrong and so the manager decides to call in an expert.
The expert arrives shortly after being summoned and, without uttering a word, walks directly towards the control box. After staring at the wires and circuitry for no more than 2 minutes, the expert then produces a teeny-weeny hammer and makes a very gentle tap near the right edge of the unit.
Immediately, the assembly line starts working once more.
The manager is filled with joy as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager receives a request of payment for services for the amount of $5,000.
Feeling furious, the manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a ludicrous fee for less than 5 minutes work, he then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to assess and avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a blog set up so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other online properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
While the solution to many problems is often ridiculously simple once it’s been 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 a few settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up to get desired results
- Which options you need to configure to make sure things will function exactly as you want, etc.
(Generating new 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. This is because it’s not just about installing and configuring one or two plugins, configuring some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many parts including your server, your WP site, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we create a simple diagram of the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps in more detail.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about configuring settings in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic you may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like integrating server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess and 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After 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 or online services.
Configuring External Sites
The concept behind choosing external sites is that all of your content will be published from one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will be automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external services have been added to your setup, content linking back to your website is automatically posted to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your website will receive exposure online, helping you tap into a whole new audience and source of traffic.
Some of these web properties and online platforms will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site to speed up the process 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 before configuring your WordPress site:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with important data, tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site data, the account details can be used with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic results, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your account, you can add tracking information to WordPress via a simple plugin and feed data automatically to many other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account and site data with Bing Webmaster Tools have been set up, you can use the information with traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers both 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.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, 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 traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your various social accounts in order to 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 accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
Set up accounts and profiles with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(There are many social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging technology platforms and content aggregators that can act 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 blog …
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 own RebelMouse website.
There are many different solutions you can incorporate into your own traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a 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 site.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring WordPress Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services text area
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is listed …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence web 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 affect someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to read 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 your traffic system is concerned, however, the main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to notify all the update services you have listed 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 …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Section)
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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings Screen)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your permalinks …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, see this step-by-step tutorial: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO Using SEO-Friendly URLs
WordPress – Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to bring more visitors to your site
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling 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, securing your website or blog is something you cannot afford to ignore.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to hackers and bots.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to 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 present your content to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site using WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress 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 plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring Settings – WordPress Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout elements of your site, some themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a free theme) have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic System – Other Important Aspects To Consider
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic 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 hurt your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do business online, you need to make sure that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Compliant?)
If you need help understanding how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website, go here:
WordPress Categories & Tags
WordPress post tags and categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your website.
(Categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s tags and categories should be discussed and 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 post tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
HTML Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications discover your web content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. HTML site maps are web pages that provide visitors with a an understandable map of how your content is organized, whereas XML sitemaps are mostly just a bunch of code that only search engine bots can interpret. Although Google will index your pages 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.
Don’t Forget Your 404 Error Page
When online users type in the wrong web address or click on a dead link, they are greeted with a 404 Not Found error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your web server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do to automatically begin bringing more web traffic is post fresh content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform the configuration stage of the traffic automation process typically takes some website developers months to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is explained in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This article is part of an article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online and drive traffic organically using a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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