Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is post content consistently to automatically start driving web traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase of the automation process. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to ensure that new web traffic will automatically start flowing when you publish new content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale and are researching every advantage they believe will increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives your business a significant advantage from the very beginning.
The Configuration Stage Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site 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 you.
Here’s one way to understand the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an 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 an amusing little story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All was running smoothly in the gizmo-making assembly line when suddenly, things came to a halt.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
The expert arrived within in less than 30 minutes and, without saying a word, headed immediately towards the control box. After staring silently at the board for 5 minutes, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer and made a gentle tap near the top-right corner of the control unit.
Immediately, all the machinery returned to normal.
The floor manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received a bill for $5,000.
The manager picked up the phone and rang the expert, demanding to know why they were charged such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived and was placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for years spent acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WP website or blog fully configured so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
While the solution to many challenges is often quite simple once it’s been implemented, 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 simply installing a website and configuring basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which services you need to set up to achieve certain results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to ensure that things will work to plan, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. This is because it’s not as simple 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 complex process that involves your web hosting server, your site, and various external sites and online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about configuring settings in your server that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your site will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
Once your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step is to set up and configure a number of third-party sites.
External Sites
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all content should be posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, be automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After adding these external platforms to your setup, content pointing back to your site is automatically posted to these platforms. Your content and site will then receive exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your 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 before configuring your WordPress settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with important information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account, use this information with web traffic settings and notifications 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 website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, traffic tracking information can be added to WordPress via a plugin and and sent to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, your information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional web presence.
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 with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your automated web traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social media and social bookmarking 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 drive new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and pages set up with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we will look at some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to many social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging web platforms and content aggregators that can act as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your website.
There are various solutions you can add to your own web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
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.
Global Settings – WordPress
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
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 discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services field
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
WordPress lets you 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 and WordPress will do the rest …
(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 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 summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content 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 traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly notify your update services list when a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although this section is 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings Screen)
The examples below show some of the ways SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
If you need help setting up permalinks, refer to this tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugin Settings – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with the effects of 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 help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and botnets.
For more information, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your web pages …
(WordPress SEO plugins help increase traffic by improving your website’s ability to rank better in search engines)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find and index, it also lets you specify how to present your content in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your website using WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site with WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins allow you to choose which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which users can unlock by liking your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also include options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Configuring Other WordPress Sections
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online (or plan to), it’s important that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Categories & Tags
WordPress tags and post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your website.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your web pages.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s post categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories that have been set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover your web content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, whereas an XML sitemap is mostly filled with code that only search engine bots can interpret. Although search engines like Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Forget To Configure This Too!
When visitors type in the wrong URL into their browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they are greeted with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 Not Found page) …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web 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 System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then to automatically attract new web traffic is add web content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many web professionals months to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is addressed in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Three
To keep reading, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an article series aimed at helping small business owners learn how to grow their business and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress-driven website and proven web marketing strategies.
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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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