Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is add great content consistently to automatically drive more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase of this process. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, 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 section, we discuss the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to attract traffic automatically just by regularly posting fresh content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business becoming so much more competitive, it’s worth exploring any advantage available to get better results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over the competition. For businesses, an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s a simple way to understand the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence plus an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps 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 story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All is moving along in the widget workshop when all of a sudden, the machines comes to a halt.
No one can figure out what is wrong and so the plant manager decides to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately heads to the main control box. After staring at the wires and circuitry for no more than 2 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a teensy-weensy hammer from his tool box and makes a gentle tap near the left side of the box.
Immediately, the assembly line springs to life again.
The manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager receives a service bill for $5,000.
Feeling furious, the factory manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why they were charged so much for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to get paid fairly for having spent years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WP web site set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although experts often make complicated situations and problems look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up and activated to achieve desired results
- Which options you need to configure to make sure things will work as expected, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing and configuring one or two plugins, tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different components including your web hosting server, your WordPress site, and a number of third-party sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If all the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your site may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like implementing spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites or online services.
External Sites & Accounts – Configuration
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all of your content gets posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it then gets automatically distributed to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external services have been added to your system, content linked back to your website is automatically posted to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and website benefits from additional exposure online, helping you tap into a new audience and source of traffic.
Some web properties and online platforms will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site to help speed up the configuration process 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 Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with important information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site data with Google Webmaster Tools, the information can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data have been set up, you can add traffic monitoring code to WordPress via a Google Analytics plugin and send data automatically to various other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account and site details are set up, your details can be used with traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress provides users with a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to grow 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 show you how to integrate this into your automated traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your various social media accounts before you can configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and bring new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and pages set up with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can You can post your content to many social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will look at some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to loads of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add a feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your page.
There are many different platforms you can incorporate into your web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website For Traffic
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Area)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services section
By default, only one service is listed …
(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 text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to read 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 most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly notify various update services whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although this section is 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
Permalinks enable WordPress to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings Screen)
Here are some of the ways your site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
We have created a detailed tutorial on using WordPress permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress – Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic to your site
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is immune from cyber attacks.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(WP Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to find, crawl and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with their networks can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins let you specify 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 social plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which users can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress – Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, some themes also give you options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as clicking a few buttons to configure your settings and enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Additional Sections Of WordPress To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your website is compliant with government regulations.
(Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Categories & Tags
Post categories and tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(Post categories help search engines index your pages, which improves traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be reviewed and set up during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A visitor site map that displays all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, 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!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your WordPress 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong URL into their web browser or click on a link pointing to a destination on your site that no longer exists, they are presented with a 404 Not Found error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up on your server, there are 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 WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to start attracting web traffic is post great content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some web professionals 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 you can. This step is covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of an article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively with a WordPress website and proven web marketing methods.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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