Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a website into an automated web traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this 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 blog, all you have to do is post web content regularly to begin bringing more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed critical setup decisions. 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 has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site so you can automatically bring new visitors when you begin posting content regularly on your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as their greatest challenge online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive worldwide and businesses are exploring every advantage they believe will help them improve their results and performance online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge advantage over other competitors. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives your business an immediate competitive advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Stage Is What Makes All 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 can offer.
Here’s one way to understand the key difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence and an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
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 type of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here’s a joke.
Knowing Where To Tap
All was running smoothly in the widget factory when things came to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived soon afterward and, without saying a word, immediately headed towards the control box. After staring at the box for less than 3 minutes, the expert then took out a little hammer and made a very gentle tap near the top-left corner of the box.
Immediately, every machine inside the assembly plant returned once again to normal.
The floor manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The factory manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived and was placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic consistently to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one in the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for investing years developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP blog fully set up so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social sites and dozens of other web 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 many experts often make complex things 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 basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which services need to be set up to achieve certain results
- Which options need to be configured in order to ensure that everything works to plan, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing a piece of software, tweaking some 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 web site, and a number of third-party sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about tweaking settings in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your webhosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic you can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like implementing spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step is to set up and configure a number of third-party sites or online solutions.
External Services
The idea behind setting up external sites is that all of your content is posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it gets distributed automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external platforms into your configuration, content linked back to your website will be automatically published on search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and site benefits from exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some web properties and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings to help save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts before configuring your WordPress settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools – 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 important data, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your Google Webmaster Tools account and entering site details, you can use this information with traffic 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 site’s performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data have been set up, you can add traffic tracking code to WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and feed data instantly to many other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account is set up, you can use the account information with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers both a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your automated traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need your social accounts set up in order to 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 get new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts set up with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will cover some of these tools in more detail during the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add an RSS feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your website.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your own traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring WordPress Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Section)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section includes only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress will do the rest …
(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
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 web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to get the rest of the content from a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to automatically ping your update services list when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion Settings
Although this section is 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings enable your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings Screen)
The examples below show some of the ways site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help your site generate more traffic
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is immune from being attacked.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
More info:
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 improve your SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website with WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site with WordPress plugins.
Many social share plugins allow you to choose which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring layout and design elements of your website, many themes also give you options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Other Sections To Configure
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic system configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of business online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your site is found to comply with government laws and regulations.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
Categories & Post Tags
WordPress post tags & post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your pages.
(Post categories help search engines better organize and index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post categories and tags should be discussed and set up earlier on, 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 you have set up.
Add A Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find 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. Only search engines can read XML sitemaps. Although Google will index your pages just using 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.
404 Error Page – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors searching online for your website enter the wrong URL or click on an invalid hyperlink, they are presented with a 404 page …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 Not Found error page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional web pages …
(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 on your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is publish great content on a consistent basis to start driving web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration process typically takes some web 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 Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive tutorial series aimed at helping small business owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively using a WordPress website and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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