Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is post new content consistently to automatically start driving traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started 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 website has been built with 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 phase of the traffic system. We explain how to configure a WordPress site to ensure that traffic will automatically start flowing as you begin to post content on your website.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive and businesses are researching every advantage they believe will help them improve their performance online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage over other competitors. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the very start.
The Configuration Process Is The Difference
There is a significant 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 explain the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Things were running smoothly in the widget-making plant when everything came to a sudden stop.
As no one could figure out what happened, the manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walked immediately towards the main control box. After staring silently at the circuit board for 3 minutes, the expert then produced a tiny little hammer and made a gentle tap near the left side of the control unit.
Immediately, the machinery began to work as before.
The manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received a request of payment for services for $5,000.
The manager picked up the phone and dialled 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 notice arrived in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when the machines stopped functioning and no one on the business was able to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to be compensated fairly for years spent acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your blog fully set up and configured so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although experts often make complex solutions look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring some of the site settings for clients. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up and activated to achieve specific outcomes
- Which settings you need to configure in order to make sure things function as expected, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. This is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a piece of software, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your server, your website or blog, and various external sites and/or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your web server that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your website can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like implementing spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites or online services.
External Services
The basic idea of adding external sites is that all of your content gets posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it then gets automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external services into your traffic system, content linked back to your site will be automatically syndicated to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and business will benefit from added exposure online, helping your business tap into a whole new audience and traffic source.
Some of the third-party sites and solutions will need to be set up before configuring your settings to help speed up the 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 Webmasters
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of essential information, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account has been with Google are set up, you can use this information to automate traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up Google Analytics, you can add tracking information to WordPress via a plugin and send data automatically to various other online applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account has been set up, use the account information with traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your web traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and get new visitors to your site)
You will need your social 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 and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts set up with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can post your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add a feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your page.
There are various sites and platforms you can incorporate into your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes 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 affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is listed …
(WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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
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 web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to view 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 here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to automatically notify your update services list when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
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)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways your site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
For a detailed tutorial on setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is guaranteed immunity from being targeted.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
More information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages more indexable …
(SEO plugins help increase traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with free or inexpensive plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to 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 shares), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Traffic Theme Settings – Configuration
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 layout and design of your site, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes have 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 that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Additional Areas To Consider
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with 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 are making money online (or plan to), it’s important that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
WordPress Post Tags And Categories
WordPress post tags & categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your pages.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your website.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s tags and categories during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover more of your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – Don’t Forget To Configure It!
When online users enter the wrong web address or click on a dead hyperlink, they will typically be greeted with a 404 Not Found page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up in your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your site fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do is publish new content consistently to automatically generate web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various elements and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some web developers a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part Three
To keep reading about this topic, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping website owners learn how to grow their business online and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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