Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article 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 automatically attract new web traffic is post web content consistently!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of this process. We helped you understand the best way to start 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 site was 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 system. The focus of this section is to help you understand what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different from a professionally configured website. You will also discover what kind of work needs to be done to ensure that when all is set up and fully configured, you can automatically attract visitors when you start publishing fresh content to your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive and are researching any advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage over the competition. An expertly configured website gives you a flying start from the moment your website is launched.
The Configuration Phase 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 a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to explain the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Things were running smoothly in the gizmo assembly plant when suddenly, all equipment stopped.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
The expert arrived shortly afterwards and walked immediately towards the control box. After staring silently at the wiring board for what seemed like 3 minutes or less, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny little hammer from his utility belt and made a single tap near the right-hand edge of the box.
Immediately, the whole workshop lit up and began working again.
The floor manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one in the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for years spent building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress web site set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social media and dozens of other web properties would be automatically 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 experts often make complicated things look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which third-party accounts need to be set up to achieve specific outcomes
- Which options need to be configured in order to make sure things work as envisioned, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. This is because it’s not just about installing a solution, clicking on a button or two, or configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of many components including your server, your website or blog, and a number of external sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the activities 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 what’s involved in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about configuring settings in your web hosting account that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic you may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure various external sites.
Configuring External Services
The purpose of adding external sites is that all of your content will get published to one central location (your site) and from there, it will get automatically distributed to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you add these external services to your traffic system, content pointing back to your website is automatically published on these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and business benefits from added exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some web properties and online services 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, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful data, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your account and site details have been set up, you can use the account information to integrate and automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, traffic monitoring information can be added to all pages in WordPress via plugins used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account and entering site data, you can use this information to automate web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed 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 grow 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 at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media accounts set up in order to 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 get new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts and profile pages with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse page.
There are many different sites and platforms you can add to your traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings
By default, your WordPress admin area includes a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(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 have specifically chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, only one service is available …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post 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 on this page can influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could impact 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 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 here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly ping all the update services you have listed when new posts get 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 …
(Global Settings – 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 blogs 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
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks Screen)
The examples below show some of the ways permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Setting Up Your WordPress Permalinks
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress 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 website is immune from being attacked by hackers.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and botnets.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with members of their own online communities can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site with free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you select which social 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 social plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress – Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also include options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as clicking a few buttons and enabling the function …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Configuring Other WordPress Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Legal Web 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 things that can go wrong when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of business online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your website is compliant with all government laws and regulations.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
We have written a detailed article about why it’s important to have a compliant website here:
WordPress Post Tags & Post Categories
WordPress tags & post categories help search engines classify and index your web pages, which improves traffic.
(Categories help search engines index your website, which helps you get more traffic.)
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 Stage.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal results.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from 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 Not Found – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on a hyperlink pointing to a destination on your site that no longer exists, they will typically be presented with an error page …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do is post new content regularly to automatically begin attracting more web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some website professionals months to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of an article series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
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