Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing more traffic is publish new content regularly!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of the blueprint. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this section, we will look at the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. You will understand what makes an expertly configured site different. You will also understand just what type of work is required to make sure that when everything is set up and fully configured, you can automatically start attracting visitors when you add fresh content on your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With competition becoming increasingly more difficult businesses are researching every opportunity they can to get better results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to describe the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is more work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this here is a little story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Things are going fine in the gizmo workshop when all of a sudden, everything comes to a stop.
No one can figure out what is wrong and so the manager decides to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walks directly towards the main control box. After staring silently at the board for 3 minutes or less, the expert then produces a tiny little hammer from his shirt pocket and makes a gentle tap about three and half cm from the left-hand side of the control unit.
Immediately, the whole machine springs back to life.
The manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager receives an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
Feeling furious, the factory manager dials the expert. Why had he charged them such an exorbitant fee for so little time delivering such minimal amount of work? He then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors consistently to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to be compensated fairly for spending years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a web site fully configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating online 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 website?)
Although experts often make complex things look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to work things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to get specific results
- Which settings you need to configure to ensure that everything works as expected, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring one or two plugins, tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration stage is a complex process that involves your web server, your website, and various third-party sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we create a simplified flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Configuring Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings in your web server that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your business can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and online services.
External Accounts
The concept behind adding external sites is that all content is posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it then gets automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external platforms have been added to your configuration, content pointing back to your website will be automatically syndicated to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and website will then receive exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites and online services 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, you will want to set up the following accounts before configuring your WordPress site’s settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with essential data, tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your Google Webmasters account and entering site details, use your details with web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up your Google Analytics account, tracking information can be easily integrated with WordPress using plugins and and sent to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account and site details with Bing Webmaster Tools have been set up, use the details to automate traffic 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 2, WordPress offers website owners a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, 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 Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your social media and social bookmarking 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 and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site.
Set up accounts with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools (we will look at some of these tools in more detail during the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. 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 lets you add a feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
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 account.
There are various technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your own traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Screen)
As described below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section displays only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
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 readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s choice 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.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Normally, you want to encourage 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 there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
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 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)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings Screen)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your permalink URLs …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress – Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your site, including 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 WordPress site for dealing with 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 cannot ignore the importance of web security.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and bots.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your web pages …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress Plugins For SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your website’s SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to find, crawl and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with their social networks can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing features to your website easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with WordPress plugins.
Most social share plugins allow you to choose which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your pages which users can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, some themes also provide built-in options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as clicking a few buttons to enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Additional Areas Of WordPress To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Tags & Categories
WordPress tags & post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your pages.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your website.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
When configuring your website to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Visitor Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications find more of your online content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When online users type in the wrong URL or click on a dead link, they are presented with an error page …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error 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 area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do is add web content regularly to bring more traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some 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 addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive tutorial series designed to help business owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively and drive traffic organically using a WordPress website and proven web marketing methods.
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