Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a website into an automated web traffic generation machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is post content on a consistent basis to automatically attract more web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We explained the best way to start 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 has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic system. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to automatically begin to get new visitors when you begin posting web content on a regular basis on your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Also, the business landscape is becoming ever more competitive and businesses are looking for every advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage. Having an expertly configured website gives your business a significant advantage from the very start.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Stage
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s one way to understand the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take more labor 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 with an amusing anecdote.
A Semi-True Story …
Everything was running smoothly in the gizmo-making manufacturing plant when things suddenly ground to a halt.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
The expert arrived shortly after being summoned and, without uttering a word, went immediately to the main control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for 3 minutes or less, the expert then produced a little hammer and made a gentle tap near the left side of the control unit.
Immediately, everything came back to life.
The plant manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The factory manager called the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a ludicrous fee for less than five minutes work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the plant stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to be compensated fairly for years spent acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a web site set up and configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other web properties would be immediately 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 attracting new visitors to your website?)
While many experts often make complicated things look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than installing a website and configuring a few settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which services you need to set up to achieve certain outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to ensure that processes will work exactly as you have envisioned, etc.
(Driving 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 involved and complicated. It’s not just about installing and configuring a plugin, tweaking some settings in your admin area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your server, your WordPress site, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simplified flowchart showing the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your business will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like integrating server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites.
Integration With External Services
The basic concept of setting up external sites is that all content will get posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will be automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external platforms have been added to your system, content with links pointing back to your site is automatically fed to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and website will receive added exposure online, helping your business tap into a new audience and source of traffic.
Some of these third-party sites will need to have accounts 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 before configuring your site’s settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential data, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your Google Search Console account, use the information to automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your account and site data, you can add traffic tracking information to WordPress via a simple plugin and send data automatically to various other applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account is set up, use this information to automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow 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 at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your automated web traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social media accounts set up before you can 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 traffic to your site.
Set up accounts and profiles with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose those that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can post your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
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 RebelMouse account.
There are many different sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Site 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 points.
WordPress Settings
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(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 have specifically chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, 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 of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post 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 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, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers 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 excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to automatically ping various update services whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(Settings Menu – 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 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow your site to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your permalinks …
(Configuring permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to increase traffic
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is safe from being attacked.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
More information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web content easy for search engines to index …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help increase traffic by improving your website’s SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your site’s search engine optimization. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with WordPress plugins)
There are many free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social sharing plugins let you specify which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Theme Settings – Configuration
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, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Additional Areas
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your website complies with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
For a detailed article about the importance of having a legally compliant website, refer to this article:
Post Tags & Categories
Categories and tags help search engines index your website, which helps you get more traffic.
(WordPress post categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s post tags and categories earlier on, 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 tags and post categories that have been set up.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications find more of your web content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. HTML site maps provide visitors with a an understandable map of how your content is structured, while XML sitemaps are mostly just a bunch of code that only search engines can interpret. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Configure Your 404 Page
When visitors searching for your website type in the wrong web address or click on an invalid link, they are greeted with an error – page not found message …
(A 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 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 WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your website has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is add great content on a consistent basis to automatically drive traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some web 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 covered in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section Three
To continue reading this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an article series designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively using a WordPress website and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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