Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this series, we described the process, and 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 is publish content consistently to start generating more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand 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 site, and what to do if your existing website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration phase of this process. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to begin bringing visitors automatically just by publishing new content to your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale and are researching any advantage they can to increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge advantage over other competitors. For business owners, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start from the moment their website is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to describe the key difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only is additional work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Allow me to illustrate this point with a joke.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All is going just fine in the widget assembly line when things grind to a sudden halt.
As no one can figure out what went wrong, the floor manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
The expert arrives shortly after being summoned and immediately walks to the control box. After staring silently at the electronic components for less than 5 minutes, the expert then produces a teeny-weeny hammer from his tool belt and makes a very gentle tap about 1 cm from the top-right corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything begins working once again.
The floor manager is overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Bewildered and bordering on a sense of outrage, the manager rings the expert. Demanding to know why they have been charged such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor was able to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to assess and repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a site configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other web 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 challenges often seems quite easy in hindsight, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to figure things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than just installing a website and configuring settings for clients. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party services you need to set up and activate to get specific outcomes
- Which options you need to configure in order to make sure processes will run to plan, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing a solution, clicking a button, or tweaking some settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web hosting server, your site, and a number of third-party 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 something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your hosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your site may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
Once your server settings have been checked and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites.
External Services
The concept behind adding external sites is that all content gets published to one central location (your site) and from there, it gets automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external services have been added to your system, content linked back to your site gets automatically published on search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and site will be given exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the external sites will need to be 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, you will want to set up the following accounts before configuring your settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with important data, tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site data with Google, you can use your details 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 results, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, you can add traffic tracking code to WordPress using a plugin and send data instantly to other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account and site details with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, the details can be used to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to grow a professional web 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 with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your automated 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 and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we will review some of these tools in more detail during the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to many social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add an RSS feed from your site …
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 users can follow your own RebelMouse website.
There are various technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
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 your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to get the rest of the content from summaries, 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 main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to ping all the update services you have listed in the Update Services field whenever a new post gets 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 Screen)
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 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks enable your site to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s post permalinks …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, see this tutorial: Setting Up WordPress Permalinks
Configuring Settings – WP Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind 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
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No blog is immune from a cyber attack.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to hackers and botnets.
Go here to learn more:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages easy for search engines to find, crawl and index …
(SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your site’s ability to rank better in search engines)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social share plugins let you choose which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring Settings – Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also provide built-in options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as clicking a few buttons to enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Additional Configuration Steps
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you are making money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
For a detailed article on why it’s important to have a compliant website, go here:
Post Categories & Tags
Post categories and tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your web pages.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your website.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and post categories should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories that have been set up.
Visitor Site Map
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find more of your website content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. HTML site maps are web pages that provide readers with a visual map of how your content is structured, while XML sitemaps are mostly just a bunch of code that only search bots can read. Although Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Your WordPress 404 Error Page
When visitors searching for your site type in the wrong web address or click on hyperlinks pointing to destinations on your website that no longer exist, they are greeted with an error – page not found message …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then to automatically begin bringing more traffic is post web content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many web professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have 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 continue reading about this topic, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help site owners learn how to grow their business using a WordPress website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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