Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically start attracting traffic is add content regularly!)
In Part 2, we discussed 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 site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. We explain why an expertly configured site is different, and just what type of work needs to be done to ensure that when everything is fully configured, you will attract new visitors automatically just by publishing web content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business getting increasingly more competitive, it’s worth exploring every advantage that can help you increase your own competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage. An expertly configured WordPress site gives your business an immediate competitive advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
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 builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to describe the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is more work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Everything is humming along in the widget-making manufacturing plant when things come to a sudden stop.
No one can figure out what’s gone wrong and so the plant manager decides to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert heads out directly to the control box. After staring silently at the box for no more than 5 minutes, the expert then produces a teeny-weeny little hammer from his tool belt and makes a single tap near the top-left edge of the box.
Immediately, everything springs back to life.
The manager is grateful and relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, 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 have been charged so much for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor was able to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to ask to be compensated fairly for investing years developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP site set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
While many experts often make difficult situations and problems look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to figure things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party services need to be set up and activated to get desired outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured in order to make sure everything will function as envisioned, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. It’s not just about installing and configuring a plugin, clicking a couple of buttons, or tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many components such as your web hosting server, your website, and various third-party sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a better look at these steps.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your web server that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your business may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like integrating spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess and 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and services.
External Accounts
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all of your content will get posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it will be automatically distributed to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external services into your traffic system, content with links pointing back to your website will be automatically posted to these platforms. Your website will then be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of these sites will need to be set up before configuring your site to speed up the configuration process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
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 diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site details, this information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic-related 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 website’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details have been set up, tracking code can be added to WordPress via plugins and and fed to other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account and entering site data with Bing Webmaster Tools, this information can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress provides users with a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at 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
(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 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 bring new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social sites you can You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select the ones that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(There are many social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse social feed.
There are various sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically chosen 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, this section displays only one entry …
(Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section …
(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 visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog 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 most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly notify various update services when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(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 posts, 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)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks enable WordPress to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Setting Up Your WordPress Permalinks
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic to your site
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what 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 blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
Go here for more information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving improving the way search engines like Google and Bing find and index your website …
(WordPress Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO 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. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins let you select 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 likes), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which users can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings and options for improved traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Additional Areas Of WordPress To Configure For Improved Traffic Flow
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site stays compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
To learn more about how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your website or blog, see this article:
Categories And Post Tags
Tags and categories help search engines classify and index your web pages, which improves traffic.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your website.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s tags and categories during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
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 find your online content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Only search engine bots can read XML sitemaps. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin 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 Page Not Found – Another Source Of Traffic!
When visitors type in the wrong web address into their web browser or click on an invalid link, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your website or blog has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do is post great content consistently to automatically begin attracting more web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and knowledge required to perform this process can take some website professionals months to acquire.
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 covered in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively with a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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