Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
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 automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically drive web traffic is add new 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 things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site so you can ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing simply by regularly publishing web content on your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With competition becoming increasingly more difficult businesses are researching every opportunity they can to get better results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge advantage over the competition. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives you a flying start as soon as your site is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to describe the key difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take additional labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All is moving along in the gizmo-making assembly line when things suddenly comes to a halt.
As no one can figure out what went wrong, the manager decides to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walks directly to the control box. After staring at the control unit for less than 5 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a little hammer and makes a single tap about one cm from the left corner of the unit.
Immediately, the plant springs back to life.
The manager is grateful and relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a request of payment for services totalling $5,000.
Feeling angry, the factory manager picks up the phone and calls the expert. Why have they had been charged such a ridiculously high fee for less than five minutes work? He then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives and is placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when production 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 every right to demand fair compensation for investing years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your site configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other web properties would be instantly 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?)
Although many experts often make complicated solutions look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to figure things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than installing a website and configuring site settings for a client. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party services need to be set up to get certain outcomes
- Which settings you need to configure to ensure that everything will work as expected, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and complicated. It’s not as easy as installing a solution, tweaking some options and settings in your admin area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your server, your website or blog, and various third-party sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we create a simplified diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings in your web server that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your business can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites.
External Web Properties And Accounts – Configuration
The purpose of adding external sites is that all of your content should be published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will radiate outwards to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you add these external platforms to your network, content pointing back to your site will get automatically added to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social media sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and website will receive exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of these sites and online platforms will need to be set up before configuring your site’s settings to 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:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful information, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your account is set up, this information can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, you can add traffic tracking code to all of your web pages in WordPress via a simple Google Analytics plugin and feed data automatically to various other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account and entering site data with Bing, this information can be used with traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers users the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated web traffic system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media accounts set up before you can integrate these with 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 set up profiles with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to many social sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick those that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will review some of these tools in more detail during the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to loads of social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access 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 site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your social feed.
There are various technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site For Traffic
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
WordPress Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains an important and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section contains only one entry …
(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 …
(You can 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 of displaying the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your site to read the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to ping various update services when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
Although discussion settings are 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)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using permalinks in WordPress here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including many plugins that 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 WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is completely immune from being attacked by hackers.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to botnets and hackers.
Go here for more details:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your web pages …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help increase traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google 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. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with their social networks can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site with WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins let you choose which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your pages which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring Settings – WP 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 options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons and enabling the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other WordPress Features For Traffic
Last but not least in the configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you do any type of business online, you need to ensure that your website is found to comply with all legal requirements.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Categories & Tags
Post categories and post tags help search engines index your website, which improves traffic.
(WordPress post categories help search engines index your pages, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post categories and tags should be discussed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
When looking at ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. HTML site maps are web pages that provide readers with a an understandable map of how your content is structured, while XML sitemaps are mostly code that only search engine bots can understand. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page – Don’t Forget To Configure This Too!
When visitors searching online for your site type in the wrong URL or click on a hyperlink pointing to a destination on your website that no longer exists, they will normally be greeted with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 Not Found error page) …
(A 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then to automatically begin attracting web traffic is add fresh content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many web professionals months to learn.
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 addressed in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part 3
To keep reading this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively and drive traffic organically using a WordPress-powered website and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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