Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article 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 website, all you have to do to automatically start generating traffic is publish new content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase of the automation process. 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 site, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. We explain how to configure a WordPress site to drive visitors automatically when you publish content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business getting increasingly more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth looking into every advantage that can help you get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous competitive advantage. For businesses, an expertly configured website means having an immediate competitive advantage from the very start.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s one way to explain the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a story.
A Semi-True Story …
All was going well in the widget factory when things came to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived within 15 minutes and walked immediately towards the control box. After staring silently at the electronic components for no more than 2 minutes or so, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer and made a gentle tap about one cm from the bottom-left side of the control unit.
Immediately, every machine sprang to life again.
The plant manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The factory manager picked up the phone and dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged so much for less than five minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for spending years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a site set up and configured so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other online 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?)
While the solution to many challenges is often ridiculously easy once it’s been implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring some of the site settings for the client. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up and activated to get specific results
- Which settings you need to configure to ensure that processes will work how you have planned, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. This is because it’s not as easy as installing one or two plugins, clicking a couple of buttons, or configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web server, your web site, and various external sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we create a simplified diagram of the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your web server 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 web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your site can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like integrating spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up 404 error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites.
External Accounts
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all content gets published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it radiates outwards automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external services into your traffic system, content linking back to your site will be automatically published on your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and site will be given exposure to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some external sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to speed up the configuration 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:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with useful data, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site details, you can use this information with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your up your Google Analytics account and entered your site details, you can add traffic monitoring information to all of your pages in WordPress via plugins and feed data automatically to many other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account and entering site data, this information can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers both a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional web 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 explain how to integrate these features into your automated traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking 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 accounts and attract new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up accounts with and post your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will cover some of these tools in more detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your website …
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 platforms that can be incorporated into your traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Global Settings
The WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked automated 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 configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services box
By default, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 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 text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to get 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 most important setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to automatically ping all the update services you have listed when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion
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 content, 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 Section)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using WP permalinks here: Configuring Your WordPress Permalinks
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugin Settings – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
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 website for dealing with the effects of 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, website security is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and bots.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website …
(WP Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with others can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social features to your site easily with WordPress plugins)
There are many free or inexpensive social sharing plugins available for WordPress.
Most social plugins let you specify which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, some themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
Additional Sections Of WordPress To Configure
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic system configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online, you need to make sure that your website is found to comply with all government legal requirements.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article on how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website here:
WordPress Tags & Categories
WordPress categories and tags help search engines better organize and index your pages, which improves traffic.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your website.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be discussed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
When looking at ways to automate and improve 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 displays all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications find your website content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although 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 – An Additional Source Of Traffic!
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong web address into their web browser or click on an invalid link, they are presented with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 Not Found page) …
(A 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your website or blog has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is post web content on a regular basis to automatically begin bringing web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The expertise required to perform the configuration process can take many web professionals months to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To continue reading this article, click here:
- Web Site Traffic Blueprint Part 4 – Learn How To Turn Your Website Into A Traffic Generation Machine
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic automatically with a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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