Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to bring more traffic is add great content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase. 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 site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic system. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured to automatically start bringing traffic when you begin to add fresh content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With competition making business survival progressively tougher businesses are looking for every advantage they can that can help you get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage over the competition. Having an expertly configured website gives your business an immediate advantage from the very start.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally 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 understand the key difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence plus an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Everything was humming along in the gizmo-making manufacturing plant when things suddenly ground to a halt.
No one could figure out what went wrong and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert immediately headed to the main control box. After staring at the circuit board for less than 3 minutes, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer from his pocket and made a single tap about three cm from the left corner of the unit.
Immediately, the machinery sprang to life.
The plant manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager received a bill for $5,000.
The factory manager rang back the expert, demanding to know why the expert had charged them such a large amount of money for so little time delivering such minimal amount of work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning and no one on the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to be compensated fairly for years spent building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your blog configured so all you have to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
While the solution to many challenges may seem ridiculously easy in hindsight, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than just installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up to achieve specific outcomes
- Which options you need to configure to make sure things will function as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved and complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing a piece of software, configuring some settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your server, your site, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If all the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram of the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a better look at what’s involved.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about configuring settings in your web-hosting account that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic you will attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these, the next step is to configure a number of third-party sites and services.
External Services
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all content gets posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it gets distributed automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After adding these external platforms to your setup, content linking back to your site will get automatically fed to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and site will benefit from additional exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some web properties and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site’s 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:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your Google Webmasters account, this information can be used to automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up Google Analytics, traffic monitoring code can be added to WordPress via a simple plugin and and fed to various other useful applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account and entering site data, you can use this information with traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers both a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, 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 automated 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 social accounts in order to 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 and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles set up with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with and syndicate your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse account.
There are many different platforms you can incorporate into your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Global Settings
By default, your WordPress dashboard area includes a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields 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 powerful and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As described below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
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 your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your content 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 here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically notify all the update services you have listed in the Update Services area whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Section)
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 sites 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 Section)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up WP permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Plugins – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
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 site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your websites is something you simply cannot ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(WP Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find, crawl and index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website using WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing features to your website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social share plugins let you choose which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your pages which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
Themes
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 design and layout aspects of your site, some themes also provide built-in options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic System Configuration – Other Sections
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic 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 start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of business online (or plan to), it’s important that your site is found to comply with government laws and regulations.
(Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
Post Tags And Post Categories
WordPress post categories and tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your pages.
(Post categories help search engines index your website, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s post categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
When configuring your web site to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags that have been set up.
Visitor Site Map
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover more of your web content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, while an XML sitemap is mostly code that only search bots can read. Although search engines like Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Configure Your 404 Page Not Found
When online visitors enter the wrong web address into their web browser or click on a hyperlink pointing to a destination on your site that no longer exists, they are greeted with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 error page) …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 Not Found error page can be configured to funnel visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website or blog fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do to start generating web traffic is publish new content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and knowledge required to perform this process can take some website professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 3
To keep reading about this topic, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help site owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively using a WordPress-driven website and proven web marketing methods.
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