Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and 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 to generate traffic is add new content regularly!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase of the automation process. We helped you understand the best way to get started 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 existing site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to ensure that traffic will automatically start flowing as you start to add content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive worldwide and businesses are researching every advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous competitive advantage. For business owners, having an expertly configured website means having an immediate competitive advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Phase Is What Makes All 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.
Here is a simple way to describe the main difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is additional work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing anecdote.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All is running smoothly in the widget-making manufacturing plant when things come to a sudden stop.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the manager decides to call in an expert.
The expert arrives shortly after being summoned and, without uttering a word, immediately goes to the main control box. After staring at the circuit board for what seems like 2 minutes or so, the expert then produces a tiny hammer from his tool belt and makes a very gentle tap near the left corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything springs back to life.
The manager is delighted as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request for payment of services rendered for $5,000.
With great anger, the factory manager dials the expert. Why did he charge them such a ludicrous fee for less than 5 minutes work? He then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors consistently to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the business had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to get paid fairly for years spent building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your site configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be instantly 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 site?)
Although many experts often make complex things look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up and activated to achieve certain results
- Which options you need to configure in order to make sure processes will work as expected, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. It’s not as easy as installing and configuring one or two plugins, clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your server, your WP site, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website 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 the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings in your webhosting account that affect how your website will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web 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 web traffic your site will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up 404 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, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites.
External Sites & Services – Configuration
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all of your content will get published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will syndicate automatically to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After adding these external services to your network, content linking back to your website will be automatically syndicated to these platforms. Your business will be given exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to help save time 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 Search Console
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with essential data, tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account with Google Webmaster Tools, you can use your information with 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 activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account, account data can be easily integrated with WordPress via a simple plugin used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account and site details with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, this information can be used to automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful 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 this into your automated traffic system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your social accounts 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 and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts set up with all the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social sites you can You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(There are many social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
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 social feed.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications you can add to your own web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and frequently overlooked traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in the Update Services 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, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(You can 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 on this page can influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up 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 blog to read the rest of the content from excerpts, 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 most important setting here 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 enables WordPress to notify all the update services you have listed when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion Settings
Although this section is 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s post permalinks …
(Configuring post permalinks)
For a detailed tutorial on setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring Settings – WP Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help your site generate more traffic
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No website is safe from being attacked by hackers.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
For more information, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving the way search engines like Google and Bing find and index your web pages …
(WP SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with their friends and networks can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are loads of social sharing plugins available for WordPress users.
Many social plugins allow you to select which 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 followers), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring Settings – WP Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for better traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic – Other Important Sections To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic system configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor 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 make money online, you need to make sure that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
Categories & Tags
Post categories and tags help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps you get more traffic.
(WordPress categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your website.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s categories and tags should be discussed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories you have set up.
HTML Site Map
A site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications discover more of your site’s 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 thing. Although Google will index your site just using 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 can result in increased traffic.
404 Page – Don’t Forget To Configure It!
When online visitors type in the wrong URL or click on a hyperlink pointing to a destination on your website that no longer exists, they will typically be presented with an error – page not found message …
(A 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do is add content on a regular basis to automatically start attracting web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website 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 the series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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