Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically start attracting web traffic is post web content regularly!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. 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 site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section, we will look at the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to ensure that new traffic will automatically start flowing when you begin to add fresh content regularly to your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as their greatest challenge online. With business getting increasingly more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth looking into any and every advantage available to improve your own performance and results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage over the competition. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start from the moment their site is launched.
Configuration 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 a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s a simple way to understand 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 professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take extra work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All was going fine in the widget-making workshop when everything ground to a sudden halt.
As no one could figure out what happened, the manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately walked to the control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for 5 minutes or so, the expert then took out a teensy-weensy little hammer and made a very gentle tap about three cm from the right-hand corner of the unit.
Immediately, the assembly line sprang back to life.
The plant manager was greatly 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 request for payment of $5,000.
The manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why the expert had charged them so much for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived and was placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to get paid fairly for years spent building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly fix a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a blog configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social media 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 website?)
Although the solution to many problems can seem quite simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to figure things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring settings for clients. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which third-party services you need to set up and activate to achieve desired outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to ensure that processes will work as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing a piece of software, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your server, your website or blog, and a number of third-party sites and online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we create a simplified flowchart of the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your hosting account specifically for handling 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 welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your site will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like configuring server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites or online services.
Third-Party Accounts Integration
The purpose of adding external sites is that all content will be published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will syndicate automatically to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external services into your traffic network, content linking back to your website will get automatically added to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and business will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of the third-party sites and online services will need to have accounts 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, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account and site details with Google have been set up, you can use your details to integrate and automate traffic-related 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 website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account, you can add traffic monitoring information to WordPress using a plugin and feed data automatically to other useful applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account, this information can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers both a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need your social 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 drive new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose the ones that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will review some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your social feed.
There are various solutions you can incorporate into your own web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
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 key areas.
WordPress – Global Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
As described below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services box
By default, this section displays only one entry …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 Settings
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to view 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 here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to ping all the update services you have listed whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion Settings
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 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Traffic Plugin Settings – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality to your site, including traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more visitors to your site
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is safe from a cyber-attack.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnets and hackers.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages more indexable …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find, crawl and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing 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 value to readers.
(You can add social sharing features to your website easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
You can easily add social sharing features to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to specify which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your pages which users can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a few buttons to enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic System Configuration – Additional Features
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do business online, you need to make sure that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
WordPress Categories & Tags
Post categories & post tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your website.
(WordPress categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s categories and tags during the Website Planning Process.
When configuring your site to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories you have set up.
Site Map
A site map that lists all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications discover more of your website 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. HTML site maps provide visitors with a logical map of how your content is organized, whereas XML sitemaps are mostly filled with code that only search engine bots can interpret. Although search engines like Google will index your site just from 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 can result in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your Site’s 404 Page Not Found
When visitors enter the wrong URL or click on an invalid hyperlink, they are greeted with a 404 Not Found page …
(A 404 Error Page)
A 404 Not Found page can be configured to 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 WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then to start driving traffic is add new content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some website developers a long time 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 explained in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively and drive traffic automatically with a WordPress-driven website and proven online marketing methods.
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