Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated web traffic machine 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 is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically begin attracting traffic is add content regularly!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to automatically get new visitors whenever you add new content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive worldwide and are researching every advantage they can to get better results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage. For businesses, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users 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 set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s a simple way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take extra work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Allow me to illustrate this point with an amusing little story.
Knowing Where To Tap
Things are going fine in the gizmo-making assembly line when all of a sudden, everything ceases working.
As no one can figure out what’s gone wrong, the plant manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert heads out directly to the main control box. After staring at the wiring diagrams for no more than 2 minutes or so, the expert then produces a teensy-weensy hammer and makes a single tap near the right corner of the control unit.
Immediately, every machine in the assembly plant returns once more to normal.
The floor manager is greatly overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager receives a bill for $5,000.
Bewildered to the point of feeling outrage, the factory manager calls the expert. Why did he charge them so much for so little time spent delivering such 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 driving web traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the business was able to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for having spent years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a website configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social followers from sites like Facebook and Twitter and dozens of other online properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
While experts often make complicated situations and problems look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than simply installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up to get desired outcomes
- Which options you need to configure to ensure that everything will work as envisioned, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. This is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a piece of software, tweaking some options and settings in your admin area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of many components including your server, your website or blog, and various third-party sites and/or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If all the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your hosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your website can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like integrating server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up 404 error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
Once your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step is to set up and configure a number of third-party sites or online solutions.
External Services
The concept behind setting up external sites is that all of your content gets published to one central location (your site) and from there, it then gets automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external platforms have been added to your network, content linking back to your website gets automatically published on these platforms. Your content and business will be given additional exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these sites will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site to help speed up the 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 Webmasters)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with useful information, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site data, the information can be used with traffic 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 traffic results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, tracking information can be added to WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account and site data with Bing are set up, use this information to integrate and automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features 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 traffic to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking accounts set up 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 attract new visitors to your site.
Set up accounts and profile pages with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up. 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 syndication tools.
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse account.
There are various platforms that can be incorporated 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 third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your 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 set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Settings Menu – 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 or your webmaster have purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services section
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 – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified 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
***
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 visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to view the rest of the content from excerpts, 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 feature is enabled or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to notify the update services list when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s permalinks …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, refer to this tutorial: How To Set Up Your WordPress Permalinks
Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more visitors to your site
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No website is completely immune from being attacked.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to hackers and botnets.
More info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving the way search engines like Google and Bing find, classify and index your web pages …
(WordPress SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your website’s search engine optimization. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social share plugins allow you to specify which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by liking your page.
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 site, some themes also include options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons and 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)
Configuring Other WordPress Sections For More Traffic
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website stays compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, see this article:
WordPress Post Tags And Categories
WordPress post categories and tags help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which helps you get more traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your web pages.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s post categories and tags during the Website Planning Stage.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories that have been set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications discover more of 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 two different things. HTML site maps provide users with a visual map of how your content is structured, whereas XML sitemaps are mostly filled with code that only search engine bots can read. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Your 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong URL or click on hyperlinks pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they will normally be greeted with an error – page not found message …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover 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 let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to begin attracting web traffic is publish fresh content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various elements and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website developers a long time to acquire.
Once you have 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 section of our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive tutorial series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business using a WordPress website and proven online marketing strategies.
Subscribe Using The Form Below And Get Notified Of New Tutorials!
***
"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
***