Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is add web content regularly to automatically start generating web traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. 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 site, and what to do if your site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we discuss the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site so you can automatically attract new visitors as you begin to post new content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as their greatest challenge online. Also, the business landscape is becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale and businesses are looking for any advantage they believe will help them get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over the competition. With an expertly configured website, you have a significant competitive advantage from the very start.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to understand the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take more labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Allow me to illustrate this with a joke.
Knowing Where To Tap
Things were moving along in the gizmo plant when everything suddenly came to a halt.
As no one could figure out what went wrong, the manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert immediately headed to the control box. After staring silently at the circuit board for about 2 minutes, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny hammer and made a single tap about three and half inches from the right edge of the control unit.
Immediately, the plant came back to life.
The plant manager was greatly overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager received a bill for $5,000.
The manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived and was placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the factory stand to lose when the machines stopped functioning and no one in the business was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to be compensated fairly for investing years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to fix a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a blog set up and configured so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social followers from sites like Facebook and Twitter and dozens of other 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 driving traffic to your website?)
Although the solution to many problems can seem quite easy once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves 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 you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which 3rd-party services you need to set up and activate to get specific results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to ensure that everything functions as envisioned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. It’s not as easy as installing one or two plugins, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of many different parts such as your server, your website or blog, and various external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic you may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess and error page 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 checked and configured (if required), the next step is to configure a number of external sites and services.
Configuring External Sites
The basic concept of adding external sites is that all content should be published to a central location (your site) and from there, radiate outwards 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 traffic network, content linking back to your site is automatically published on search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and business will be exposed to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some external sites and online solutions will need to be set up before configuring your 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 site)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of important information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your Google Search Console account, this information can be used to automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, marketing campaigns, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up your Google Analytics account, tracking data can be easily integrated with WordPress via a simple Google Analytics plugin and instantly fed to various other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account and site data have been set up, you can use this information with traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional business presence online.
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 with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated traffic system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media accounts set up in order to integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site.
Set up accounts and profile pages with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up and syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select the ones that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(There are loads of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your website.
There are various technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
Configuring WordPress For Traffic
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.
WordPress – Global Settings
The WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Section)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have specifically chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section displays only one entry …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(You can 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 Settings
This section affects how your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence web 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 decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to view 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 main setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to ping all the update services you have listed whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Section)
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 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)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, refer to this tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality to your website, including 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 handling both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, web security is something you simply cannot ignore.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to bots and hackers.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find, crawl and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with their own networks can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins let you specify which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to protect content 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 improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, some themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Additional Don’t Forget These
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you do any kind of business online, you need to ensure that your site stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
If you need help understanding why it’s important to have a legally compliant website, go here:
WordPress Post Tags & Post Categories
WordPress post tags & categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(Post categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and categories should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
When configuring your website to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags you have set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover your site’s 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 not the same things. Although search engines like Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Your WordPress 404 Error Page
When visitors enter the wrong URL or click on links pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they will normally be greeted with a 404 Not Found page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect 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 Not Found error page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do to start generating new web traffic is publish content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some web developers months to acquire.
Once you have 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 series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively with a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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