Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated web traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is publish new content consistently to bring more web traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to ensure that new web traffic will automatically start flowing just by publishing web content to your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as their greatest challenge online. With competition making business survival progressively tougher businesses are researching any and every advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage. An expertly configured website gives your business a flying start as soon as your website is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s one way to understand the main difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take more labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here’s a joke.
A Semi-True Story …
Things were humming along in the widget-making plant when everything ground to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrived and, without saying a word, immediately went towards the control box. After staring at the schematics for 5 minutes or less, the expert then produced a little hammer and made a very gentle tap near the left edge of the box.
Immediately, everything returned once again to normal.
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 an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
The factory manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged such an exorbitant fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived and was placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget plant stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning and no one in the factory floor had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to get paid fairly for having invested years developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly repair a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WP website or blog fully set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
While experts often make complex things look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to get desired functionalities on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve certain results
- Which settings you need to configure to make sure things work as planned, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite complicated. It’s not just about installing and configuring a solution, tweaking some settings in your dashboard area or clicking a couple of buttons … 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 third-party sites and online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your site will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step is to configure various third-party sites and online services.
External Accounts
The basic concept of adding external sites is that all content should be posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, syndicate automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external platforms have been added to your configuration, content linked back to your website gets automatically published on these platforms. Your business will then receive exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site 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:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential information, tools and reports about your website.
Once your account has been set up, you can use the details with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your up your Google Analytics account and entered your site data, traffic monitoring information can be easily integrated with WordPress via a simple plugin used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account is with Bing have been set up, this information can be used to automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your web traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social accounts set up 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 and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and pages set up with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can syndicate your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can post your content to many social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse social feed.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your own traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After 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 WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to website 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 or your webmaster have purposely configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section displays only one entry …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
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
This section affects how your content gets seen by visitors 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 to users in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to view the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to ping your update services list whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Global Settings – 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 blogs 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 Screen)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow your site to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s post permalinks …
(Configuring permalinks)
If you need help setting up WordPress permalinks, refer to this tutorial: Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to increase traffic
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling 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, you simply cannot ignore the importance of securing your web sites.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with members of their online communities can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your site easily with free or inexpensive plugins)
You can add social sharing features to your website easily with WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins allow you to choose which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress Theme Settings – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Additional Areas Of WordPress To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online, you need to ensure that your website remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
We have created a detailed article on the importance of having a legally compliant website here:
WordPress Post Categories & Tags
WordPress categories & tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(Post categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s tags and categories during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags that have been set up.
Visitor Site Map
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications find your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although Google can 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 can result in increased traffic.
Your Site’s 404 Page
When online users enter the wrong URL or click on a hyperlink pointing to a page on your site that no longer exists, they are greeted with a 404 Not Found page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect 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 admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then to automatically generate traffic is publish fresh content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise required to perform this phase of the traffic automation process typically takes some website professionals a long time 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 the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part Three
To continue reading, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online using a WordPress-powered website and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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