Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
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, all you have to do is add fresh content on a consistent basis to attract traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website 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 two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration stage of the traffic system. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured to automatically drive visitors whenever you add new content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With competition becoming progressively tougher businesses are researching any advantage they can that can help you improve their results online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start from the moment their site is launched.
The Configuration Process Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s one way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only is additional work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
A Semi-True Story …
All is going well in the gizmo-making workshop when things come to a sudden stop.
No one can figure out what went wrong and so the plant manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert immediately walks to the control box. After staring silently at the box for no more than 3 minutes or so, the expert then produces a tiny little hammer from his utility belt and makes a gentle tap about two inches from the right side of the unit.
Immediately, all the machinery starts working as before.
The floor manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Bewildered and angry, the manager picks up the phone and rings the expert. Demanding to know why the expert has charged them such an exorbitant fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work, he then 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 it, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for investing years building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a website fully set up and configured so all you have to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be automatically 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 website?)
Although the solution to many problems often seems quite simple in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring settings for clients. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which third-party services you need to set up to get certain outcomes
- Which settings you need to configure to make sure processes will work to plan, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. It’s not as simple as installing one or two plugins, configuring some options and settings in your admin area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration stage is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your website or blog, and various external sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a better look at these steps.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your web server that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web-hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your website will attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites and services.
External Sites
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all of your content is published to a central location (your site) and from there, it then gets distributed automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you add these external sites to your traffic network, content with links pointing back to your site gets automatically fed to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social sites, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your website will receive added exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some web properties and online services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress settings to help 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 settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Search Console 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, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account has been with Google have been set up, your details can be used to integrate and automate web 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 traffic results, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your up your account and entered your site data, you can add visitor tracking code to all of your web pages in WordPress via plugins and feed data instantly to many other online applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account and entering site data, the account details can be used with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) 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 platform if you plan to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media and social bookmarking 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 attract new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are many social sites you can You can post your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we will review some of these tools in more detail during the Automation phase).
(There are many social sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social 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 social feed.
There are many different solutions that can be incorporated into your own traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
By default, your WordPress admin area includes a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section lists only one entry …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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 readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your content 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 traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to instantly ping all the update services you have listed when a new post is 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 unchecked …
(WordPress 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 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)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using permalinks in WordPress here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website is safe from a cyber attack.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to botnets and hackers.
More info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(WP Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to find and index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social share plugins let you select which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
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 layout and design of your site, some themes also include built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) can be configured for improved traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
Additional Sections Of WordPress To Configure For Better Traffic Flow
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you do any type of business online, it’s important that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
Tags And Categories
Post categories & tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your pages.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your web pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s post categories and tags during the Website Planning Phases.
When configuring your website to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags that have been set up.
Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find more of your site’s content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. HTML site maps are web pages that link to all other content on your site and provide users with a logical map of how your content is structured, whereas XML sitemaps are mostly just a bunch of code that only search engines can interpret. Although search engines like Google can index your pages 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 can result in increased traffic.
Configure Your WordPress 404 Error Page
When online users type in the wrong URL or click on a dead hyperlink, they are greeted with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 page) …
(A 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(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 Automation Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to automatically bring more web traffic is add new content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website professionals a long time to learn.
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 covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive tutorial series aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively using a WordPress-driven website and proven online marketing methods.
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