Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing new traffic is post great content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed 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 website, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress web site 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 start to get traffic when you start to add web content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive and are researching any and every advantage they believe will increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. Having an expertly configured website gives your business an immediate competitive advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the main difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only is more work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Everything is humming along in the gizmo-making factory when suddenly, production grinds to a complete stop.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the plant manager decides to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert walks straight towards the main control box. After staring at the electronic components for no more than 3 minutes or so, the expert then produces a teensy-weensy hammer from his pocket and makes a single tap about one inch from the left corner of the control unit.
Immediately, everything comes back to life.
The manager is overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a bill for $5,000.
Furious, the manager calls the expert. Demanding to know why they were charged such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work, he promptly 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 #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic consistently to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for having spent years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WP site set up and configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
While the solution to many problems often seems ridiculously 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 a few settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts you need to set up to get specific outcomes
- Which options need to be configured to ensure that things will work as expected, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved. It’s not as simple as installing and configuring a plugin, clicking a button … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration phase is a complex process that involves your server, your WordPress site, and a number of external sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we create a simplified flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps.
Configuring Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic you can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like integrating spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
After your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various external sites and/or online services.
Third-Party Sites
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all of your content should be published from a central location (your site) and from there, it will radiate outwards to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external services into your traffic network, content linked back to your website is automatically fed to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and website will be given exposure to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some third-party sites will need to be set up before configuring your settings 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 before configuring your site:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with essential information, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your Google Search Console account and site details are set up, the details can be used with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, you can add tracking information to WordPress using plugins and send data instantly to various other online applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account and entering site data, the details can be used with web traffic-related settings and notifications 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 website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated web traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social accounts set up before you can 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 and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we will look at some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to many social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse social feed.
There are various technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your own traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
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 points.
Global WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include 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 traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is listed …
(WordPress Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to read 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 in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly ping your update services list when new posts are 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 Section)
Discussion
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 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)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow your site to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Configuring Your WordPress Permalinks
Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is safe from being attacked by hackers.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to bots and hackers.
For more information, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website …
(WP SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find 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 Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with their own friends and networks can help boost traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your website using free or inexpensive plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to select which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, some themes also give you built-in options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) allow you to configure settings for better traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic System – Additional Configuration Areas
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do business online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
For a detailed article on how to quickly add legal pages to your website or blog, see this article:
Categories And Tags
Tags and post categories help search engines index your pages, which improves traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your web pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and categories should be reviewed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A WordPress Site Map
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 site’s content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although 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.
Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When visitors searching for your site type in the wrong URL into their browser or click on a link pointing to a destination on your website that no longer exists, they will normally be presented with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 page) …
(A 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then is publish new content on a regular basis to bring more traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many web professionals a long time to acquire.
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 explained in the next article in the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively with a WordPress-powered website and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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