Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to generate traffic is publish great content consistently!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase of the automation process. 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 site, and what to do if your existing website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section, we look at the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing whenever you post web content on your website.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as their greatest challenge online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive worldwide and are looking for any and every advantage they believe will increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage over other competitors. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives you a significant advantage from the very beginning.
The Configuration Stage Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s one way to describe the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let me illustrate this with a joke.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Everything is humming along in the widget-making plant when the machines suddenly stops.
As no one can figure out what went wrong, the manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrives and, without uttering a word, walks immediately to the main control box. After staring at the wiring board for no more than 3 minutes, the expert then takes out a teensy-weensy little hammer from his utility belt and makes a gentle tap near the right side of the control unit.
Immediately, the plant starts working again.
The manager is grateful and relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a request of payment for services for $5,000.
Furious, the manager calls the expert. Why have they had been charged so much for less than five minutes 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 number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for having invested years building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to fix a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP website or blog configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other web properties would be immediately 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 driving traffic to your website?)
While many experts often make complicated solutions look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to figure things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than just installing a website and configuring basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to get desired results
- Which settings need to be configured to ensure that processes will work to plan, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing a plugin, tweaking some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your server, your website, and various third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simple diagram showing the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your web hosting account that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your website can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites and/or online services.
3rd-Party Sites Integration
The idea behind setting up external sites is that all of your content gets posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it gets distributed automatically to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external sites have been added to your traffic network, content linking back to your website will be automatically fed to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and website benefits from exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of these external sites and solutions will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site to help speed up the configuration 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 Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important data, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site data with Google, the account information can be used with traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data are set up, you can add visitor tracking code to all of your web pages in WordPress via a plugin and send data instantly to various other online applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account has been set up, use the information with traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO 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 grow a professional online presence.
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 with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your web traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your various social accounts before you can integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and drive new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and profile pages with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse page.
There are various sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your 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 WordPress Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in this 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 – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services field
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section contains only one entry …
(WordPress Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section …
(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 your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your site 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 your traffic system is concerned, however, the main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically ping the list of update services whenever a new post is 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 unticked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion
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 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Permalinks enable WordPress to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways your permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using WP permalinks here: Configuring Your WordPress Permalinks
WordPress – Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that affect traffic generation
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is safe from cyberattacks.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to attacks from hackers and botnets.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your website’s SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with their social networks can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social features to your website easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social plugins allow you to choose which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which users can unlock by sharing your page.
Theme Settings
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 provide options for improving SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) allow you to configure settings and options for improved traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as clicking a few buttons to enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Configuring Additional WordPress Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle 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 engage in any form of commercial activity online, you need to ensure that your website is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Tags And Categories
Post tags and post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your website.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s tags and categories during the Website Planning Stage.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories that have been set up.
Add A Site Map
A visitor site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but 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 site 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 can result in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Another Source Of Web Traffic!
When visitors searching online for your site type in the wrong web address or click on a hyperlink pointing to a page on your website that no longer exists, they are presented with an error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do is post new content on a regular basis to bring more web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The expertise required to perform the configuration phase of the traffic automation process typically takes some web professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as you can. This step is addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read more, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping site owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
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