Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is publish content on a consistent basis to automatically drive more traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand 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 where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. We explain why an expertly configured WordPress site is different. You will also learn how much work needs to be done to ensure that when everything is fully set up and configured, you can drive new visitors automatically when you add new content to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive worldwide and are looking for every advantage available to improve their performance online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over the competition. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives you a significant advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s a simple way to explain the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take extra labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Allow me to illustrate this with a joke.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Things are going well in the widget factory when everything grinds to a sudden halt.
As no one can figure out what went wrong, the plant manager decides to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walks immediately towards the main control box. After staring silently at the schematics for no more than 3 minutes, the expert then produces a teensy-weensy hammer from his shirt pocket and makes a single tap about 2 inches from the right-hand corner of the box.
Immediately, everything springs to life again.
The floor manager is filled with joy as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager receives an invoice for $5,000.
Feeling angry, the manager picks up the phone and rings the expert. Demanding to know why the expert has charged them such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for investing years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and repair a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP site set up so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other online 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 attracting new visitors to your site?)
While the solution to many problems often seems ridiculously easy once implemented, 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 a few settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up and activated to get certain outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to ensure that everything works to plan, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a piece of software, clicking a couple of buttons, or tweaking some settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many parts such as your server, your WordPress site, and a number of external sites or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram of the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your hosting account specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your website will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for both good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like implementing spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up 404 error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these, the next step is to configure a number of external sites and services.
External Services
The idea behind choosing external sites is that all of your content should be published from a central location (your site) and from there, syndicate automatically to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external platforms have been added to your setup, content linking back to your website will get automatically fed to these platforms. Your website will then be given exposure to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some of the sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your settings to help speed up the configuration process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with important information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account, this information can be used to integrate and automate traffic 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, organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your account, tracking information can be added to all pages in WordPress via a simple plugin used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, the account details can be used to integrate and automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your web traffic generation system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social media and social bookmarking 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 set up accounts and profiles with all the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up and syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging web platforms and content aggregators that can act as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse social feed.
There are various solutions you can incorporate into your own traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
Configuring Your WordPress Site For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and often overlooked 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 specifically chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is available …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(You can 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 readers 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 text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to read the rest of the content from a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to instantly ping various update services whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
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 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)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways your post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress – Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add almost every type of functionality to your site, including plugins with features that help to 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 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, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of website security.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to hackers and bots.
Go here for more info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your web pages …
(WordPress SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to find and index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your website easily with free or inexpensive plugins)
You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social share plugins allow you to specify which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring Settings – Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, some themes also include built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a free theme) allow you to configure settings for better traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic System Configuration – Additional Areas To Consider
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic 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 as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
To learn more about how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog, go here:
Tags And Categories
WordPress post categories and tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your pages.
(Categories help search engines better classify and index your website, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories you have set up.
Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find more of your web content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although Google will index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Forget To Configure This Too!
When online visitors enter the wrong URL into their web browser or click on a dead hyperlink, they will normally be presented with a 404 page …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect 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 several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is add new content regularly to automatically begin attracting traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some website developers 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 section of our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section Three
To continue reading this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help small business owners learn how to grow their business online and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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