Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your website into an automated web traffic generation machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 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 is add new content consistently to automatically bring web traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. We will show you why an expertly configured site is different than a professionally configured site, and how much work is required to ensure that when all is set up and configured, you can automatically get traffic when you begin to post fresh content to your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business getting so much more competitive, it’s worth learning about every opportunity you can to get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives you a significant advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Stage Is What Makes The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s one way to explain the main difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only is extra work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this point here’s a joke.
A Semi-True Story …
All was running smoothly in the gizmo workshop when suddenly, the machinery stopped.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived shortly after being summoned and went directly to the control box. After staring at the wiring board for no more than 3 minutes, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer and made a single tap about one inch from the left-hand corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything started working once again.
The manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received a bill for $5,000.
The factory manager picked up the phone and dialed the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them such a ridiculously high fee for less than 5 minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving new traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one in the business was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for years spent developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to assess and avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WP website or blog set up and configured so all you have 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 driving traffic to your site?)
Although the solution to many challenges is often quite easy once it’s been implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which services need to be set up to achieve specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to ensure that things function as planned, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite involved. It’s not just about installing a piece of software, tweaking some settings in your dashboard area or clicking a button … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of many different parts such as your web hosting server, your website, and a number of external sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your web-hosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your website may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like implementing spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step is to configure various external sites or online solutions.
Configuring External Web Properties
The basic concept of adding external sites is that all content is posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it syndicates automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external services have been added to your network, content linking back to your site gets automatically posted to these platforms. Your content and business will then receive increased exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of these sites and services 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, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Search Console lets you inform 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 and site details with Google Webmaster Tools have been set up, you can use this information to automate traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your account, you can add your account code to WordPress via plugins and feed data instantly to many other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account, the information can be used with traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to build a professional online presence.
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 show you how to integrate this into your 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 pages and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need your social accounts set up before you can 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts and profile pages with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with and syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick those that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your account.
There are various sites and platforms you can add to your traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Area)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services text area
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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 your content gets seen by readers 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 text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to read 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 traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly ping all the update services you have listed whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
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 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)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks Screen)
Here are some of the ways your site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
We have created a detailed tutorial on using permalinks here: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
WordPress Plugin Settings – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to attract more visitors to your site
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your website is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
Go here for more information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help increase traffic by improving your website’s ability to rank better in search engines)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find, crawl and index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with others online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website with free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins let you select which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, many themes also include built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure options and settings for improved traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your content is as easy as clicking a few buttons to configure your options and enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Configuring Other WordPress Sections
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do business online, it’s important that your website remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?)
We have written a detailed article about adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
WordPress Post Tags & Categories
WordPress post tags and post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your pages.
(Post categories help search engines better organize and index your pages, which improves traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be set up during the Website Planning Stages.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags you have set up.
HTML Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites discover your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although search engines like Google can 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 can result in increased traffic.
404 Page – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors searching for your site enter the wrong URL into their browser or click on a dead link, they will normally be presented with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your web server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do is post new content consistently to drive web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some website professionals months 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 covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive tutorial series aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively using a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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