Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is publish new content regularly to start generating web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to get started 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 website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section, we will discuss the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will explain why an expertly configured site is different. You will also discover how much work is required to ensure that when everything is fully configured, web traffic will automatically start flowing as you begin posting web content to your web site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive worldwide and are exploring any and every advantage they believe will get better results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous competitive advantage. For business owners, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start as soon as their website is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to describe the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is additional labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here’s a joke.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Everything is going well in the gizmo plant when suddenly, the equipment stops.
No one can figure out what went wrong and so the manager decides to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert walks directly to the main control box. After staring silently at the control unit for what seems like about 5 minutes or less, the expert then takes out a teeny-weeny little hammer and makes a single tap near the right edge of the box.
Immediately, the whole workshop lights up and springs back to life.
The manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request of payment for services rendered for $5,000.
Furious, the factory manager calls the expert. Demanding to know why they have been charged such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives and is placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor was able to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to get paid fairly for investing years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your website or blog fully configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other online properties would be instantly 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?)
While experts often make complex solutions look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts need to be set up to achieve specific results
- Which options need to be configured to ensure that everything works the way you would like, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. This is because it’s not as simple as installing a plugin, tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration stage is a complex process that involves your web server, your WordPress site, and various third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we create a simplified diagram of the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your web server that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic you can attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both good and unwanted traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like configuring spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these, the next step is to configure a number of external sites and services.
3rd-Party Sites Integration
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all content should be published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, get automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external platforms into your network, content linked back to your website is automatically fed to search, social and aggregator sites. Your website will be exposed to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these sites will need to be set up before configuring your site’s settings to save time 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 Webmasters)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of essential data, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your account has been with Google have been set up, use this information with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, tracking code can be added to all pages in WordPress using a Google Analytics plugin and automatically sent to various other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account and entering site details with Bing Webmaster Tools, you can use the information with web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners 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 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 automated traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors 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.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and get new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts set up with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(There are many social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse social feed.
There are various solutions you can incorporate into your web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress dashboard area includes a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains an important and frequently overlooked traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
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 …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
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 on this page can influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your site to read the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically notify all the update services you have listed when a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although the settings in this section 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 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways your permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
We have created a detailed tutorial on using WordPress permalinks here: How To Set Up Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can improve traffic generation
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website is guaranteed immunity from being attacked.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and botnets.
For more details, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web content easy for search engines like Google to find, crawl and index …
(WP Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your website’s search engine optimization. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also lets you specify how to present your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with others can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using free or inexpensive plugins)
There are loads of social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to specify which 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 or downloads which users can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Features In Themes
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 layout and design elements of your website, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a free theme) can be configured for better traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website complies with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
WordPress Post Categories & Tags
Tags & post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your web pages.
(WordPress post categories help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
When considering ways to automate and improve web 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.
HTML Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications find your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although search engines like Google will index your site just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page – Don’t Forget This!
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on a link pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they are presented with an error – page not found message …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is post new content on a consistent basis to begin attracting new traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some website professionals months to learn.
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 article in our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 3
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This article is part of a comprehensive tutorial series aimed at helping website owners learn how to grow their business with a WordPress-powered website and proven online marketing strategies.
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