Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to drive traffic is post great content consistently!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase of the automation process. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this section, we will discuss the configuration phase of this process. We explain how to configure a WordPress site to ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing whenever you publish web content on your website.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive on a global scale and businesses are looking for any and every advantage they believe will help them improve their performance and results online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can be a huge competitive advantage. With an expertly configured WordPress site, you have a flying start and a significant advantage online.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to explain the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
To illustrate this here’s an amusing anecdote.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Things are running smoothly in the gizmo-making workshop when everything comes to a sudden stop.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the floor manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert immediately walks towards the main control box. After staring at the electronic components for less than 3 minutes, the expert then produces a tiny little hammer and makes a single tap near the right edge of the unit.
Immediately, everything returns to normal.
The floor manager is delighted as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager receives an invoice for the amount of $5,000.
Feeling angry, the manager rings the expert. Demanding to know why they were charged such an exorbitant fee for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one on the business was able to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for having invested years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a website set up so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other web properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
While experts often make complex situations and problems look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to get desired functionalities on your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up to get specific results
- Which settings need to be configured in order to ensure that everything will function to plan, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a solution, clicking a button … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of various different components such as your web server, your website, and a number of external sites …
(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 flowchart showing the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is tweaking settings and options in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web server 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 you will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step is to configure various external sites and online services.
Configuring External Services
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all of your content should be posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get syndicated automatically to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After adding these external platforms to your system, content linked back to your website gets automatically published on these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your business will benefit from exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of these web properties and online platforms will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site to help 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’s settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with useful data, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
Once your Google Webmaster Tools account is set up, your account details 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 traffic results, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your account, traffic tracking information can be integrated with WordPress using plugins used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account and entering site data with Bing, this information can be used with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. 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 Part Four of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need your social 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 and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
You should have pages set up with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to many social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your social feed.
There are various technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress Configuration
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.
WordPress – Global Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services box
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 on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your site to view the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly notify all the update services you have listed when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although discussion settings 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 articles, 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings Section)
Here are some of the ways search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
To learn more about setting up WordPress permalinks, go here: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using SEO-Friendly URLs
WordPress Plugins – Configuration
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality imaginable 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 WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your websites.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to botnets and hackers.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with others online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are many free or inexpensive social sharing plugins available for WordPress.
Most social plugins let you choose which 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 shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring Settings – WordPress Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring layout and design aspects of your website, some themes also provide options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Other Don’t Forget These
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
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 good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you do business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site is found to comply with government laws and regulations.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
If you need help understanding how to quickly add legal pages to your site, go here:
Tags And Post Categories
Categories and post tags help search engines index your pages, which improves traffic.
(WordPress post categories help search engines index your website, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, whereas an XML sitemap contains code that only search bots can interpret. Although Google will index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins 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.
404 Error Page – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors enter the wrong URL or click on an invalid hyperlink, they are greeted with an error page (known as a 404 error page) …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then to automatically begin attracting new traffic is publish content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website professionals months 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 addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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