Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a website into an automated web traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically begin attracting more web traffic is post content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. 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 site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. The focus of this section is to help you understand why an expertly configured site is different, and what type of work is required to ensure that when all is set up and configured, visitors will automatically start flowing as you start to publish content to your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Being able to drive more traffic 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 researching every opportunity they can to increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off with a flying start as soon as their website is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Stage
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s a simple way to describe the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let me illustrate this point with a joke.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Everything was going fine in the widget-making assembly line when suddenly, things ground to a halt.
No one could figure out what went wrong and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrived and, without saying a word, headed immediately towards the control box. After staring silently at the wires and circuitry for 5 minutes or less, the expert then produced a tiny hammer from his tool belt and made a gentle tap about one inch from the left-hand side of the box.
Immediately, the whole workshop lit up and came back to life.
The floor manager was greatly relieved 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 an invoice for $5,000.
The manager picked up the phone and dialled the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged so much for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived and was placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic consistently to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when the equipment stopped working and no one in the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to get paid fairly for investing years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a website or blog configured so all you have to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest 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 website?)
While experts often make complicated situations and problems look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than just installing a website and configuring a few basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to achieve desired outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to ensure that everything works to plan, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing a piece of software, tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of many parts including your web server, your WP site, and various external sites and/or online services …
(The configuration phase 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 simplistic flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic you may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like integrating spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these, the next step is to configure a number of third-party sites.
External Accounts
The basic concept of adding external sites is that all content should be posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it will radiate outwards to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After adding these external services to your configuration, content linking back to your site will get automatically published on search, social and aggregator sites. Your business will be given exposure to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to speed up the configuration 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 site’s settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of useful information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account, this information can be used with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account, you can add tracking information to WordPress using a plugin and send data instantly to many other online applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account and site details are set up, you can use the information to automate web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, 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 this into your automated traffic generation system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(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 in order to configure these as part of 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 attract new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to loads of social sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we cover some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to loads of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your page.
There are many different sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated 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 intentionally chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress will do the rest …
(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 visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to get 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 main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically notify all the update services you have specified in the Update Services field whenever new posts get 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)
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 content, 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 create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using WP permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your site, including traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that improve traffic generation
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is completely immune from a cyber-attack.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to attacks from hackers and botnets.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages easily indexable …
(WordPress SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find, crawl and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your site using WordPress plugins)
There are many free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to select which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which users can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress – Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, some themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Additional Features To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website is found to comply with all legal requirements.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
For a detailed article about the importance of having a legally compliant website, see this article:
Post Categories & Tags
Tags and post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(Post categories help search engines index your website, which improves traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags you have set up.
Add A 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 applications discover more of your website content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although search engines like Google will index your site just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Your 404 Page Not Found
When visitors type in the wrong web address into their web browser or click on an invalid hyperlink, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside 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 to automatically begin bringing web traffic is add content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise required to perform the configuration phase of the traffic automation process typically takes some web 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 addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section Three
To continue reading, click on the link below:
This article is part of an tutorial series designed to help site owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively using a WordPress website and proven web marketing methods.
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