Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is add great content on a consistent basis to automatically begin attracting new web traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration phase of the traffic system. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured in order to begin getting traffic automatically when you start to post fresh content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business getting ever more competitive, it’s worth learning about any advantage available to increase your own competitiveness online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage. For businesses, an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start as soon as their website is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to understand the 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 professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this point here is an amusing story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Everything was humming along in the gizmo assembly line when things ground to a sudden stop.
As no one could figure out what was wrong, the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived shortly afterwards and went directly to the control box. After staring silently at the schematics for what seemed like about 3 minutes or so, the expert then took out a little hammer and made a gentle tap about 1 cm from the left-hand corner of the control unit.
Immediately, everything began to work again.
The plant manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received a request of payment for services rendered for $5,000.
The manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why the expert had charged them such an exorbitant fee for less than 5 minutes work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors 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 to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for years spent building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your site set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social media 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 site?)
While many experts often make complex solutions 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 basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party services you need to set up and activate to achieve specific results
- Which options need to be configured in order to make sure things work as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite complicated. This is because it’s not just about installing a plugin, clicking a couple of buttons, or configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web hosting server, your website, and various third-party sites or online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your hosting account that affect how you will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, 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 you will attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like configuring spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to set up and configure a number of third-party sites.
Integration With External Sites
The basic concept of choosing external sites is that all content will get published to a central location (your site) and from there, it will be automatically distributed to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external services into your traffic network, content with links pointing back to your website gets automatically published on these platforms. Your content and site will be exposed to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some of these sites will need to be set up before configuring your settings to 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 before configuring your WordPress site’s settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with important data, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account with Google, you can use the account information to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) 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 engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account and site data, visitor tracking data can be integrated with WordPress using 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 is with Bing are set up, the information can be used with traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers users the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated web traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your various social media and social bookmarking accounts before you can configure these as part of 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 attract new visitors to your site.
You should have profiles with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(There are many social sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary 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 that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
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 account.
There are various sites and platforms you can incorporate into your own traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Site 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 key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
As described 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 ping the update services entered into the Update Services section
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you 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 influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to view 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 traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to notify all the update services you have listed whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
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 content, 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings enable WordPress to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks Screen)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using WP permalinks here: Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to bring more visitors to your site
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is immune 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 bots and hackers.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving improving how search engines like Google find, classify and index your website …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find and index, it also lets you specify how to present your content to Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with members of their social communities can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins let you select 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 followers), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that 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 provide built-in options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure options and settings for better traffic results)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic System Configuration – Additional Steps
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you do any kind of business online, it’s important that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Categories & Tags
Categories & tags help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which helps to increase traffic.
(Categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which improves traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags that have been set up.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
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 tools discover your website content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When visitors searching for your site 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 greeted with an error – page not found message …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do to automatically attract new traffic is add fresh content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some web developers a long time to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is explained in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 3
To continue reading, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping small business owners learn how to grow their business online with a WordPress-powered website and proven online marketing methods.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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