Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site 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 website or blog, all you have to do to bring traffic is publish content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of the blueprint. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. You will learn what makes an expertly configured site different, and how much work is required to ensure that when everything is fully configured, visitors will automatically start flowing just by regularly publishing new content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as their greatest challenge online. With business getting ever more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth exploring every opportunity you can to get better results online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge advantage over other competitors. An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a flying start as soon as your website is launched.
The Configuration Process Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to describe the differences:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take additional work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let me illustrate this point with a little story.
Knowing Where To Tap
Things were working according to schedule in the gizmo-making workshop 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.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately headed towards the control box. After staring at the wires and circuitry for no more than 2 minutes or so, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy hammer from his tool box and made a very gentle tap about 2 cm from the left corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything came back to life.
The manager was 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 a service bill for $5,000.
The manager dialed 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 on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic consistently to their sites.
How much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the business had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for investing years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress blog configured so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be immediately 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 site?)
While many experts often make complex things look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to figure things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than simply installing a website and configuring some of the site settings for clients. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which services you need to set up to achieve certain outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured to make sure things function exactly as you have planned, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s 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 admin area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many different parts including your web server, your site, and various third-party sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we create a simple flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the steps involved in 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 website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is tweaking settings in your server that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your business may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like configuring server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess and 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step is to set up and configure various external sites and online solutions.
External Sites
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all content should be posted to a central location (your site) and from there, syndicate automatically to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external sites have been added to your traffic network, content pointing back to your site gets automatically posted to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and business will receive exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some external sites 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 WordPress site’s settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of useful data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account with Google, this information can be used to automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic results, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, you can add traffic tracking information to all of your web pages in WordPress via a simple plugin and feed data automatically to other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account is set up, the information can be used with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners a hosted and a self-hosted option. 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 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 traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your 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 and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts and profiles with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we discuss some of these tools in more detail further below and during the Automation phase).
(There are many social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress Settings
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
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 an important and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As described 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 purposely configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section …
(Notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
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 web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds 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 or blog to view 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 your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to notify various update services whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although discussion settings 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 Screen)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring permalinks)
To learn more about setting up WordPress permalinks, see this tutorial: Configuring WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your website, including traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic
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, web security is something you cannot afford to ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving the way search engines like Google find and index your web pages …
(WordPress SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social features to your site easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing buttons to your site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social share plugins let you select which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress – Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure options and settings for improved traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to configure your settings and enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
Other Configuration Features For WordPress Traffic Automation
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and unwelcome 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 are making money online, you need to ensure that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
For a detailed article on how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website, see this article:
Categories & Tags
Post tags and post categories help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which helps to increase traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s tags and categories during the Website Planning Phases.
When considering ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites discover more of your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Only search engine bots can understand XML sitemaps. Although search engines like Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins 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.
Don’t Forget Your 404 Page Not Found
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on a dead hyperlink, they are presented with an error page (known as a 404 Not Found page) …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up in your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your website has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do to drive web traffic is publish great content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some website developers a long time to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as you can. This step is addressed in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read more, click on the link below:
- WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint Part 4 – How To Create An Automated Web Traffic-Getting Machine
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping site owners learn how to grow their business online using a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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