Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing more web traffic is publish fresh content consistently!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started 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 existing site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. We explain how to configure a WordPress site to ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing simply by posting fresh content on a regular basis on your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Being able 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 increasingly more competitive on a global scale and are exploring any advantage they can to improve their results and performance online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage. An expertly configured website gives you an immediate advantage from the very start.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site 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 describe the differences:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All is going well in the widget assembly line when suddenly, everything comes to a halt.
As no one can figure out what’s gone wrong, the manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert goes immediately to the control box. After staring at the board for what seems like 5 minutes or less, the expert then produces a tiny hammer from his shirt pocket and makes a gentle tap near the bottom-left edge of the unit.
Immediately, everything starts working once more.
The manager is filled with joy as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager receives a service bill for $5,000.
Outraged and furious, the factory manager rings the expert. Demanding to know why the expert has charged them such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the plant stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for having invested years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress website or blog fully set up so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
Although many experts often make complicated things look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to figure things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than installing a website and configuring a few settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to get desired results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to make sure processes will work as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a piece of software, clicking a couple of buttons, or tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration stage is a complex process that involves your web server, your site, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these steps.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your webhosting account that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic you can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like integrating spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step is to set up and configure various third-party sites and/or online solutions.
Configuring External Web Properties
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all of your content will get published from a central location (your site) and from there, it will syndicate automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external services have been added to your system, content linking back to your site will be automatically added to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content will then receive added exposure online, helping your business tap into a new audience and source of traffic.
Some of these external sites and online solutions will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to save time 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 Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with useful data, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account and site data with Google Webmaster Tools have been set up, the account information can be used with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress 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 activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your account, you can add your account code to all of your web pages in WordPress using a simple plugin and feed data instantly to many other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account with Bing, you can use this information to integrate and automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers both a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your web traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media accounts set up in order to 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 and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site.
Set up accounts and profile pages with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can post your content to many social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your page.
There are many different sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(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 prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, only one service is available …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 Settings
This section affects how your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up 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 blog 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 traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to automatically notify your update services list whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress 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 Section)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s permalinks …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
If you need help setting up permalinks, go here: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using SEO-Friendly URLs
WordPress Traffic Plugins – Configuration
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality to your website, 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 visitors to your site
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot ignore the importance of website security.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web content easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with their social networks can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to select which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, many themes also include options for improving SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Additional Configuration Steps For WordPress Sites
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, you need to make sure that your website complies with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
WordPress Post Categories And Tags
Categories and post tags help search engines index your website, which helps to increase traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s post categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
When considering ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags you have set up.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications discover your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. HTML site maps are web pages that link to all other content on your site and provide readers with a an understandable representation of how your content is organized, whereas XML sitemaps are code that only search engines can read. Although Google will 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.
404 Page Not Found – An Additional Source Of Traffic!
When online users enter the wrong web address or click on a hyperlink pointing to a page on your site that no longer exists, they will typically be presented with a 404 error page …
(A 404 Not Found page)
A 404 page can redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found 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 allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then to automatically drive more traffic is add fresh content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some web professionals months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively with a WordPress website and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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