Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is publish web content on a consistent basis to start attracting traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured in order to automatically begin driving visitors just by posting fresh content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business becoming ever more competitive, it’s worth looking into any advantage that can help you get better results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage over other competitors. An expertly configured WordPress site gives you an immediate competitive advantage from the very beginning.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a significant 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 take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s a simple way to explain the main difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only is extra work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this here is an amusing anecdote.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Things were moving along in the widget plant when everything ground to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert headed out immediately to the control box. After staring silently at the circuit board for 5 minutes or so, the expert then produced a little hammer from his tool box and made a single tap near the left edge of the box.
Immediately, the whole workshop lit up and sprang back to life.
The plant manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work. He promptly 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 the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning and no one in the factory floor was able to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for investing years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your website set up and configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites and dozens of other web properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
While the solution to many problems is often quite simple once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which services you need to set up and activate to achieve desired outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured in order to make sure things will work to plan, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. This is because it’s not as easy as installing a plugin, clicking a button … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your server, your web site, and a number of external sites and online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your web hosting account that affect how you will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web-hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your site will attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up 404 error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites and/or online services.
External Accounts
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all content is posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it gets 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 network, content with links pointing back to your website will get automatically added to search, social and aggregator sites. Your site will then receive exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some external sites will need to be set up before configuring your settings to help 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:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with essential data, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site data with Google Webmasters, you can use your details to automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your account, traffic monitoring information can be added to WordPress via a simple plugin and and sent to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account and site data with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, this information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which various WordPress plugins can access. 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 And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social accounts 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 attract new traffic to your site.
You should have profiles set up with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(There are loads of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add a feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your website.
There are various sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your own traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog For Traffic
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 key areas.
WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
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 Section)
As described below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section displays only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(You can 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 have an influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site 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.
The most important setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically notify various update services when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs 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)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings Section)
Here are some of the ways your post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Configuring WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with 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 drive more traffic to your site
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your 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, website security is something you cannot 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 hackers and bots.
For more information, go here:
WordPress 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 …
(SEO plugins help increase traffic by improving your site’s SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s search engine optimization. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily with free or inexpensive plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins available for WordPress users.
Many social plugins let you choose 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 likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your pages which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring layout and design aspects of your site, some themes also provide built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Other Important Sections To Configure
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, you need to make sure that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
If you need help understanding how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your website or blog, see this article:
Tags & Post Categories
WordPress post tags and post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.
(Categories help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s post categories and tags should be set up during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits and results.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover more of your web content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. HTML site maps are web pages that provide users with a logical map of how your content is structured, while XML sitemaps are mostly just a bunch of code that only search bots can interpret. Although Google will index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Configure Your WordPress 404 Error Page
When visitors type in the wrong URL into their web browser or click on an invalid link, they are presented with an error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error 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 page can be set up on your web server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your website has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do is add great content on a regular basis to attract new traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many web developers a long time to learn.
Once you have expertly 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 the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To keep reading about this topic, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an article series designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively and drive traffic organically using a WordPress website or blog and proven web marketing methods.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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