Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add content on a consistent basis to automatically bring traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at critical setup decisions. We helped you understand 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 website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this article, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. You will learn what makes an expertly configured site different than a professionally configured website. You will also discover what type of work is required to ensure that when all is set up and configured, you can attract new visitors automatically as you start publishing content on your website.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as their greatest challenge online. With business becoming so much more competitive, it’s worth looking into any and every advantage available to increase your own competitiveness online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous competitive advantage. With an expertly configured website, your business has an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
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 an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to understand the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this point here is a story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All is running smoothly in the widget-making factory when all of a sudden, everything stops.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the plant manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
The expert arrives shortly afterwards and immediately heads to the control box. After staring silently at the wires and circuitry for what seems like about 3 minutes, the expert then takes out a teeny-weeny little hammer and makes a very gentle tap about 1 inch from the right corner of the control unit.
Immediately, the plant springs back to life.
The plant manager is delighted as he thanks the expert, who leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager receives an invoice for $5,000.
Confused and outraged, the factory manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a large amount of money for less than 5 minutes work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to ask to be compensated fairly for having spent years developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress website or blog set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social sites and dozens of other online properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
While many experts often make difficult situations and problems look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than simply installing a website and configuring settings for clients. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to get desired functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party services need to be set up to get desired results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to ensure that everything will function as expected, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring a piece of software, configuring some settings in your dashboard area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration stage is a process that involves your server, your web site, and various external sites and online services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your server that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your webhosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your website can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like implementing spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After your server settings have been checked and configured, the next step is to configure a number of third-party sites and services.
Configuring External Sites
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all of your content will get published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get automatically distributed to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external services into your setup, content linking back to your site will get automatically fed to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social media accounts, even to users of the platform itself. Your website receives additional exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the web properties and online platforms will need to be set up before configuring your settings to help speed up the process 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 WordPress settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of essential information, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account with Google Search Console are set up, you can use this information with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account and site details, traffic tracking code can be added to all web pages in WordPress using a simple Google Analytics plugin used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account and entering site data, this information can be used to automate traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners 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.
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 these features into your automated web traffic generation system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(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 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 accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have pages set up with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up and syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(There are lots of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add a feed from your site …
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 users can follow your own RebelMouse social feed.
There are various solutions you can incorporate into your 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.
After you have configured your server settings and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
Configuring WordPress For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section lists 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 …
(You can 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 your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to get the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly notify all the update services you have listed in the Update Services area whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow your site to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings Screen)
Here are some of the options for configuring your search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Changing WordPress Permalinks
WordPress Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help improve traffic generation
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is immune from being attacked by hackers.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to botnets and hackers.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving the way search engines like Google find and index your web pages …
(SEO plugins help increase traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it also lets you specify how to present your content to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with members of their own online communities can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site using WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you select which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which users can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Features In Themes
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 design and layout of your site, some themes also include built-in options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Other Important Areas To Configure
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as 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 website is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
We have written a detailed article about why it’s important to have a legally compliant website here:
WordPress Categories & Tags
WordPress post tags and categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps you get more traffic.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your website.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s post categories and tags during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories that have been set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A visitor site map that displays all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although search engines like Google will index your site just using 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 results in increased traffic.
Configure Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When visitors type in the wrong URL into their web browser or click on a hyperlink pointing to a destination on your site that no longer exists, they are greeted with an error – page not found message …
(A 404 Not Found page)
A 404 Not Found page can redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your website or blog has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do is add new content on a consistent basis to automatically generate more web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some web professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online and drive traffic sustainably using a WordPress-powered website and proven online marketing strategies.
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