Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this article series, we 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 post web content on a regular basis to attract new traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase of the blueprint. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site to drive new visitors automatically as you begin publishing content to your website.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business becoming so much more competitive, it’s worth learning about any and every advantage available to get better results online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over the competition. For business owners, an expertly configured website means having a significant competitive advantage from the very beginning.
Configuration Is The Difference
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 developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to understand the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence plus an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a story.
Knowing Where To Tap
All was running smoothly in the widget plant when suddenly, all equipment stopped.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived soon afterward and, without saying a word, immediately headed towards the main control box. After staring silently at the schematics for 3 minutes, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy hammer and made a gentle tap about 3 cm from the left edge of the box.
Immediately, every machine started working again.
The floor manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were charged such a ludicrous fee for less than 5 minutes work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors consistently to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for years spent building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and fix a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress website or blog set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
While the solution to many problems is often quite easy once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which services you need to set up to get specific results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to make sure processes will work as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving web 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. This is because it’s not as easy as installing a plugin, tweaking some settings in your admin area or clicking a button … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of various different components including your web server, your site, and a number of third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your server that affect how you will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web-hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your business will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like server-level spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
Once your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and services.
External Services
The basic idea of adding external sites is that all of your content gets published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it gets distributed automatically to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external platforms into your traffic network, content linked back to your website gets automatically published on these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social networks, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and site will be given exposure to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some sites will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s 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:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with important data, SEO tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site data, use this information with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic results, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, you can add tracking code to all of your web pages in WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and send data automatically to other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account with Bing, this information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers users a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your social media accounts 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.
You should set up accounts and profile pages with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can You can post your content to many social sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an 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 many different platforms that can be added to your web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress administration area includes a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section and WordPress will do the rest …
(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 your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to get 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 most important setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables 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 to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
Although this section is 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your permalink URLs …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site 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, web security is something you simply cannot ignore.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to bots and hackers.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help increase traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find and index, it also lets you specify how to present your content to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using WordPress plugins)
You can add social features to your site easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins allow you to select which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update 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 site which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Theme Features – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout elements of your site, many themes also provide built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic System – Other Important Areas To Consider
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the components 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 traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you make money online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your website remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article about the importance of having a compliant website here:
Tags & Categories
WordPress post categories & tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your web pages.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your website.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s post categories and tags during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
HTML Site Map
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover more of your web content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. HTML site maps are web pages that link to all other content on your site and provide visitors with a logical map of how your content is organized, while XML sitemaps contain code that only search engine bots can read. Although Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When online users type in the wrong URL into their browser or click on links pointing to pages on your site that no longer exist, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(A 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do to automatically bring web traffic is publish new content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many web developers a long time to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part 3
To continue reading this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively with a WordPress website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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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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