Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is add new content regularly to automatically start generating web traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to start 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 existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will discuss the configuration phase of this process. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured in order to get visitors automatically just by regularly posting new content to your web site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business becoming ever more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth exploring any and every opportunity you can to get better results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over the competition. For businesses, an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Stage
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 its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to describe the difference:
With a WordPress site 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 with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
Knowing Where To Tap
All is humming along in the gizmo plant when everything grinds to a sudden stop.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the plant manager decides to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately heads towards the control box. After staring at the box for less than 3 minutes, the expert then takes out a teeny-weeny hammer and makes a very gentle tap about 1 cm from the left side of the unit.
Immediately, the whole workshop lights up and comes back to life.
The plant manager is relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Confused and bewildered, the factory manager calls the expert. Demanding to know why they were charged such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for having invested years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a site fully configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other online properties would be instantly 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 can seem ridiculously simple once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than just installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which third-party services need to be set up to get specific results
- Which options you need to configure in order to make sure everything will function the way you would like, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved and complicated. It’s not as simple as installing a plugin, configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different components such as your web hosting server, your WP site, and a number of external sites or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic you will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like implementing server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites.
Third-Party Sites Configuration
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all content should be published from a central location (your site) and from there, it will automatically be syndicated to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external services have been added to your system, content pointing back to your site is automatically published on search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content will then be given additional exposure to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites and services 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:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console)
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 useful information, tools and reports about your website.
Once your account and site data with Google Search Console have been set up, you can use this information to automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, marketing campaigns, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up Google Analytics, account information can be integrated with WordPress using a Google Analytics plugin used with other applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account and entering site details, the details can be used to automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need your social media accounts set up before you can configure these as part of 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 social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles set up with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools (we cover some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your website.
There are many different sites and platforms you can incorporate into your own web traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site For Traffic
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
The WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section …
(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 influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to get 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 your traffic system is concerned, however, the main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to instantly 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 …
(Global Settings – 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 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 display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring post permalinks)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Changing Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, website security is something you simply cannot ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and bots.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages easily indexable …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to find, classify and index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you specify which social 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 shares), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to protect content which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress – Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings and options for better traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Other Important Features To Configure
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do any type of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article about how to quickly add legal pages to your website or blog here:
Categories And Post Tags
Post categories & tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your website.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
When configuring your website to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags you have set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find more of your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Only search engine bots can interpret an XML sitemap. Although Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors searching for your site enter the wrong URL into their web browser or click on a link pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they are presented with a 404 Not Found error page …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found page)
A 404 page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your website has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then is post fresh content on a regular basis to automatically start generating traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some web developers a long time to acquire.
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 explained in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive tutorial series designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business online and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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