Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your website into an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to drive traffic is add content regularly!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of the traffic automation process. 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 site, and what to do if your existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this article, we discuss the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to ensure that new traffic will automatically start flowing whenever you post web content on your website.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as their greatest challenge online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale and are looking for every advantage they believe will improve their results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the very beginning.
The Configuration Stage Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here is a simple way to explain the key difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take more labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
Let me illustrate this point with a little story.
A Semi-True Story …
All is going just fine in the gizmo-making assembly line when things come to a sudden stop.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the floor manager decides to call in an expert.
The expert arrives shortly afterward and, without saying a word, walks immediately to the control box. After staring at the wiring diagrams for about 3 minutes or less, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer and makes a gentle tap about two cm from the left corner of the control unit.
Immediately, everything starts working once more.
The floor manager is grateful and relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Confused and outraged, the factory manager dials the expert. Why had they had been charged such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work? He then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives and is placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for having spent years building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a web site configured so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social sites and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
Although the solution to many challenges is often ridiculously easy in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party services you need to set up and activate to get specific results
- Which settings you need to configure in order to make sure things will function as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved and complicated. It’s not as easy as installing one or two plugins, tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web hosting server, your WordPress site, and various third-party sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Configuring Your Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes. What we are talking about, is tweaking settings in your web-hosting account specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your website may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like integrating spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess and error page 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, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites and services.
External Sites And Solutions – Configuration
The concept behind adding external sites is that all of your content will be posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get syndicated automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you add these external services to your configuration, content pointing back to your site will be automatically posted to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your website will then be exposed to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some sites will need to be set up before configuring your site’s settings to help 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:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of important data, tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your Google Webmasters account and entering site details, you can use this information to automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account and site details, traffic monitoring information can be integrated with WordPress using a simple plugin used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account, this information can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to grow 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 at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various 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 sites and drive new traffic to your site.
You should have profiles set up with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can post your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your social feed.
There are various sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your own traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure WordPress.
Configuring Your WordPress Site For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress Settings
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
As stated below 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 discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services field
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 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, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to get 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 traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to instantly notify all the update services you have listed in the Update Services area whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although discussion settings 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 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow your site to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways your permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
We have created a detailed tutorial on using permalinks in WordPress here: Setting Up Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to bring more visitors to your site
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 type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of website security.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and botnets.
For more details, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(WP Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a 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 and Bing to index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your website easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
There are many free or inexpensive social sharing plugins available for WordPress users.
Most social share plugins allow you to choose which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings
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 provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Configuring Other WordPress Sections
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic, 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 begin to visit your website.
If you make money online, it’s important that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article about how to quickly and easily add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress website or blog here:
Post Tags & Categories
Tags and categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your pages.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and post categories should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Phases.
When configuring your website or blog to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal results.
Add A WordPress Site Map
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 find your site’s content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. HTML site maps are web pages that provide users with a logical map of how your content is structured, while XML sitemaps are mostly filled with code that only search engine bots can read. Although search engines like Google can index your site 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 can result in increased traffic.
Your 404 Page
When visitors searching online for your site type in the wrong URL or click on a hyperlink pointing to a page on your website that no longer exists, they are greeted with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 Not Found page) …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 page can 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 in your server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is add fresh content on a consistent basis to automatically start generating more traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many web developers months to learn.
Once you have expertly 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 section of the series.
This is the end of Part Three
To continue reading, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help business owners learn how to grow their business online using a WordPress-powered website and proven web marketing strategies.
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