Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using WordPress.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to start generating more web traffic is publish new content regularly!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of the traffic automation process. 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 website, and what to do if your existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this article, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site so you can attract traffic automatically when you start to post fresh content to your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive worldwide and businesses are researching any and every advantage they believe will help them get better results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over the competition. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the very start.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to understand the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is additional labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
Let me illustrate this point with a story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All is going well in the gizmo assembly line when things come to a sudden stop.
As no one can figure out what’s wrong, the floor manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert walks immediately towards the control box. After staring silently at the circuit board for less than 2 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a teeny-weeny little hammer and makes a gentle tap near the left side of the unit.
Immediately, the assembly line comes back to life.
The manager is greatly overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Bewildered to the point of feeling outrage, the manager dials the expert. Why did he charge them so much for so little time delivering such minimal amount of work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives and is placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress website or blog configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other traffic-generating online 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 website?)
While experts often make complex things look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than simply installing a website and configuring a few basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up to get desired outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured in order to make sure things work as expected, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. It’s not as easy as installing and configuring a plugin, clicking a couple of buttons, or tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web server, your website, and various external sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved.
Configuring Your Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about configuring settings in your webhosting account that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web-hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your business can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like configuring server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure a number of external sites or online services.
External Web Properties & Services – Configuration
The purpose of adding external sites is that all content will be published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will be distributed automatically to other parts 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 gets automatically syndicated to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social networks, even to users of the platform itself. Your site will be given exposure to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some external sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site’s 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 before configuring your WordPress site’s settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with essential information, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your Google Search Console account has been set up, you can use this information with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. 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, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, traffic tracking code can be added to all of your pages in WordPress using a simple plugin and and sent to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account is set up, this information can be used with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers both 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 a number of useful features, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your web 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 your various social 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.
Make sure you have set up accounts and profile pages with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up. 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 loads of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
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 social feed.
There are many different solutions that can be added to your own traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog For Traffic
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.
Global Settings – WordPress
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Section)
As stated 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 specifically configured your site settings 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, this section includes 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
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 influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or 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.
The main setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to instantly ping the update services list whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(WordPress 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks Section)
Here are some of the ways SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring Settings – Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality to your website, including traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic to your site
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with the effects of 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 simply cannot ignore the importance of website security.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and botnets.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(WordPress SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with others can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social share plugins let you choose 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 plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by sharing your page.
WP Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout aspects of your site, many themes also give you built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons and features 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)
Other Areas To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as 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 is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
If you need help understanding why it’s important to have a compliant website, see this article:
Post Tags & Post Categories
Post categories & tags help search engines index your website, which helps to increase traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s categories and tags should be set up during the Website Planning Stages.
When considering ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A visitor site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover more of your online content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, whereas an XML sitemap is mostly code that only search bots can understand. Although search engines like Google will index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – Don’t Forget To Configure It!
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on links pointing to destinations 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 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then is post new content regularly to automatically start generating traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise required to perform this stage of the traffic automation process can take some website professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively using a WordPress website and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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