Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically attract more web traffic is publish content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of the blueprint. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site to drive new traffic automatically when you post content to your website.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive and are looking for any and every advantage they believe will increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage. Having an expertly configured website gives you a significant competitive advantage from the word “go”.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here is a simple way to explain the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get 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 tool!)
Not only is more work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let me illustrate this with a joke.
A Semi-True Story …
All is running smoothly in the gizmo assembly line when things come to a sudden stop.
As no one can figure out what is wrong, the floor manager decides to call in an expert.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrives and goes directly to the main control box. After staring silently at the box for 5 minutes, the expert then produces a teensy-weensy hammer from his shirt pocket and makes a very gentle tap near the right-hand edge of the unit.
Immediately, the plant starts working as before.
The plant manager is delighted as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Bewildered and angry, the manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why the expert has charged them so much for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for having invested years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately fix a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WP blog 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 traffic-generating online properties would be immediately 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 website?)
While experts often make difficult things look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to work things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up to achieve certain outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to ensure that things will function as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved. It’s not as easy as installing and configuring a solution, clicking a button, or tweaking some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of many components such as your web hosting server, your web site, and various external sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we create a simplified flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these areas.
Configuring The Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is tweaking settings in your server that affect how you will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your 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 you will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step is to configure various third-party sites and services.
Integration With External Solutions
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all of your content should be published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, be automatically distributed to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external sites have been added to your configuration, content with links pointing back to your site gets automatically posted to these platforms. Your content and site will be given exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of these sites will need to be set up before configuring your 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 WordPress site:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with important information, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account with Google Webmasters, your information can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, you can add traffic tracking information to WordPress via a Google Analytics plugin and send data instantly to many other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account and entering site data, use your details with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social accounts set up in order to 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 pages and drive new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have set up profiles with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will look at some of these tools in more detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, 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 a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse account.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can 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 Settings
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your 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 traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to instantly ping the list of update services when a new post gets 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 Settings
Although the settings in this section 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 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)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways your SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Setting Up Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot ignore the importance of web security.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
For more details, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving improving the way search engines like Google find, classify and index your web pages …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help increase traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help drive more 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 website with WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website with WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins let you choose which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress – Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also provide options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as clicking a few buttons to configure your settings and enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic System – Other Aspects To Consider
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online, it’s important that your site is found to comply with government legal requirements.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article on the importance of having a legally compliant website here:
WordPress Tags And Categories
WordPress post tags and post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your website.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s post tags and post categories during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags you have set up.
Add A Site Map
A visitor site map that displays all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, while an XML sitemap is mostly code that only search bots can understand. Although Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors enter the wrong URL or click on a dead link, they are greeted with an error page (known as a 404 error page) …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do is publish new content consistently to automatically bring web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some website developers a long time to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is covered in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help business owners learn how to grow their business online with a WordPress-powered website and proven online marketing strategies.
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