Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically start attracting traffic is add new content regularly!)
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 website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section of the series, we discuss the configuration phase of this process. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured to ensure that traffic will automatically start flowing just by posting new content to your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive on a global scale and are looking for every advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage over the competition. With an expertly configured WordPress site, you have a flying start as soon as your site is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here is a simple way to describe the key difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Allow me to illustrate this with a joke.
Knowing Where To Tap
All was moving along in the widget-making workshop when the machinery suddenly stopped.
As no one could figure out what went wrong, the plant manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
The expert arrived within 15 minutes and headed immediately towards the control box. After staring silently at the control unit for 2 minutes or so, the expert then took out a little hammer and made a very gentle tap about one and half inches from the right side of the control unit.
Immediately, all machines in the factory floor sprang back to life.
The plant manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The manager picked up the phone and dialed the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them such a ridiculously high fee for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for investing years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and fix a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress website set up and configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
While the solution to many challenges often seems quite easy in hindsight, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to achieve desired results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to make sure everything will function to plan, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved and complicated. It’s not as simple as installing a plugin, tweaking some options and settings in your admin area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many parts such as your web hosting server, your website or blog, and a number of external sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Configuring Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about tweaking settings in your server that affect how your website will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web-hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your website may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like configuring server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure various third-party sites and services.
Integration With External Solutions
The idea behind setting up external sites is that all of your content should be posted to one central location (your site) and from there, get automatically distributed to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external sites have been added to your network, content linking back to your site will get automatically published on these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social networks, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your business receives exposure online, helping you tap into a whole new audience and traffic source.
Some sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site to 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 before configuring your site’s settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful data, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account with Google, you can use the information to integrate and automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up Google Analytics, you can add traffic tracking information to WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and feed data instantly to many other online applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account and site data are set up, your account information can be used to automate web traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers users a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. 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 tools, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your automated traffic system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your social media accounts 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 bring new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts and profiles with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose the ones that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we discuss some of these tools in greater detail in the Automation phase).
(There are many social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add a feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
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 technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Screen)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
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 takes care of the rest …
(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 in this section can influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog 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 checkbox is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to instantly ping all the update services you have listed when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion Settings
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 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings Screen)
Here are some of the ways post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality imaginable 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 handling 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, securing your sites is something you simply cannot ignore.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and botnets.
Go here for more information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress Plugin)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this 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 with members of their social communities can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social share plugins allow you to specify which 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 followers), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which users can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring Settings – Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, many themes also provide options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure For Better Traffic Results
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online (or plan to), it’s important that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
WordPress Tags And Post Categories
Post tags & categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your web pages.
(Categories help search engines index your website, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and categories should be set up during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A visitor site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications find your site’s content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from 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.
Your 404 Page
When visitors searching online for your site type in the wrong URL into their web browser or click on a link pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they will typically be presented with a 404 page …
(A 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to begin driving web traffic is add web content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform this process typically takes some website developers months to learn.
Once you have 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 our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 3
To keep reading, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help business owners learn how to grow their business and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress website and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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