Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a website into an automated 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 web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically generate more web traffic is publish great content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we discussed critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic system. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to automatically start bringing visitors just by publishing new content to your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business becoming ever more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth exploring every advantage that can help you get better results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage over other competitors. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives you a significant competitive advantage from the very start.
The Configuration Phase Is What Makes All The Difference
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 take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s a simple way to explain the main difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this here is a story.
Knowing Where To Tap
Things were going well in the gizmo manufacturing plant when suddenly, production came to a halt.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert immediately went towards the main control box. After staring at the board for about 2 minutes or so, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer from his tool belt and made a single tap near the left-hand corner of the unit.
Immediately, the machines began working once more.
The plant manager was relieved as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them such an exorbitant fee for less than 5 minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget plant stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor was able to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to be compensated fairly for having spent years building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WP website set up and configured so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other web properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although the solution to many challenges often seems ridiculously easy in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which 3rd-party services need to be set up to achieve certain results
- Which options need to be configured in order to make sure processes will work as envisioned, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring a solution, configuring some options and settings in your admin area or clicking a button … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of different parts including your server, your website or blog, and a number of external sites and/or online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we create a simplified diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps.
Configuring The Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your server that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your webhosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic you may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like implementing server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess file 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, the next step is to configure various third-party sites.
External Services
The basic idea of setting up external sites is that all of your content should be published from a central location (your site) and from there, get automatically distributed to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After adding these external platforms to your system, content linked back to your site will get automatically posted to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your business will be given added exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of the third-party sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings to speed up the 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 Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of useful information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account with Google Webmaster Tools are set up, you can use your details to automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, you can add visitor tracking code to WordPress via plugins and feed data instantly to other applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account is set up, the account details can be used with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your traffic generation system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts before you can configure these as part of 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 bring new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(There are many social sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online platforms and content aggregators that can act as second-tier 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 that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse social feed.
There are various platforms you can incorporate into your web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a strategy 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 Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress – Global Settings
By default, your WordPress dashboard area includes a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have specifically configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section includes only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section …
(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
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 have an influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs summaries 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 site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or 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.
As far as your traffic system is concerned, however, the most important setting here 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 allows your site to automatically notify all the update services you have listed in the Update Services field whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders 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 sites 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 enable WordPress to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s permalink URLs …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: How To Change WordPress Permalinks
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 many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to attract more visitors to your site
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No website is guaranteed immunity from cyberattacks.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
More info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your web pages …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website with free or inexpensive plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most 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 post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which users can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress – Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, some themes also include built-in options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure options and settings for improved traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Additional Configuration
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you do any kind of business online, you need to make sure that your site is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
To learn more about the importance of having a compliant website, refer to this article:
WordPress Tags And Post Categories
WordPress categories & tags help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which helps to increase traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s post tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
When looking at ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories that have been set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find more of your web content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. HTML site maps provide readers with a an understandable map of how your content is organized, while XML sitemaps are mostly code that only search bots can read. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong URL or click on an invalid link, they are greeted with an error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up on your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your website or blog has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do is post great content regularly to automatically drive web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and external web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some web professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help small business owners learn how to grow their business and drive traffic organically using a WordPress website or blog and proven web marketing methods.
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