Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is publish great content regularly to automatically begin attracting new web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic system. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to get web traffic automatically as you begin publishing content regularly on your website.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive worldwide and businesses are exploring any and every advantage they can that can help you increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge competitive advantage. For businesses, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start from the moment their site is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s a simple way to describe the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a story.
Knowing Where To Tap
All was moving along in the widget-making factory when things came to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert headed immediately towards the control box. After staring silently at the control unit for about 3 minutes or so, the expert then produced a tiny little hammer and made a very gentle tap near the right edge of the control unit.
Immediately, the machinery started working once again.
The floor manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The factory manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were charged such a large amount of money for less than five minutes work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors consistently to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for spending years developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your blog set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networks and dozens of other online properties would be automatically 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?)
Although the solution to many problems can seem ridiculously easy in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up to achieve certain results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to make sure everything works as expected, etc.
(Driving new 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 involved and complicated. It’s not just about installing and configuring a piece of software, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many components such as your web server, your site, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we create a simple diagram of the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram of the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Configuring The Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your server that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your website may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like integrating server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various external sites or online services.
External Sites
The basic concept of setting up external sites is that all of your content will be posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it will be automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external services into your traffic network, content with links pointing back to your website will be automatically added to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and site will be given additional exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites 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 Search Console
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with important data, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account and site details are set up, this information can be used with traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, tracking information can be easily integrated with WordPress using a simple plugin 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. Once your account is with Bing are set up, you can use this information to integrate and automate traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking 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 accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking 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 system and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to many social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, 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 WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your website.
There are various technologies and third-party applications you can add to your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
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 of the important areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains an important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As described 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 – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(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 on this page can have an influence web 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 impact someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your site 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 your traffic system is concerned, however, the most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly ping your update services list whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although discussion settings are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs 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 …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings Screen)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring permalinks)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, see this tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the 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 securing your websites.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and bots.
For more information, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugins For SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to find and index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed to Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with their own friends and networks can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive plugins)
You can add social sharing buttons to your site easily with WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins allow you to specify which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress – Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) allow you to configure options and settings for better traffic results)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your content is as easy as clicking a few buttons to enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Additional Configuration Steps
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site complies with all legal requirements.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help understanding why it’s important to have a compliant website, refer to this article:
WordPress Categories & Tags
WordPress post categories and tags help search engines better organize and index your pages, which improves traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your website.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be reviewed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
When configuring your site to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover your website content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although search engines like Google can 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.
Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When visitors searching for your site type in the wrong URL or click on links pointing to destinations on your website that no longer exist, they will typically be presented with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 Error Page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is post great content consistently to attract more web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many web developers months 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 section of our series.
This is the end of Part Three
To keep reading, click here:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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