Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically start driving web traffic is publish web content regularly!)
In Part 2, we looked at critical setup decisions. 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 website, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration stage of this process. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site so you can automatically bring new traffic just by consistently adding fresh content to your website.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With competition making business survival progressively tougher businesses are researching any opportunity they can to get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge advantage over other competitors. For businesses, an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start from the moment their site is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s one way to describe the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let me illustrate this point with a story.
Knowing Where To Tap
Things are moving along in the gizmo assembly line when all of a sudden, the machinery stops.
No one can figure out what’s wrong and so the manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrives and, without saying a word, walks directly to the main control box. After staring silently at the box for 3 minutes or so, the expert then produces a little hammer from his pocket and makes a very gentle tap near the right-hand corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything in the workshop returns once again to normal.
The plant manager is overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager receives an invoice for $5,000.
Unable to hide his anger and sense of outrage, the factory manager calls the expert. Demanding to know why they were charged such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic consistently to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning 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 building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress site set up so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social followers from sites like Facebook and Twitter 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?)
While the solution to many challenges is often quite easy in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which services you need to set up to achieve certain outcomes
- Which options need to be configured in order to ensure that processes will run as envisioned, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. It’s not as simple as installing and configuring one or two plugins, clicking a button … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different components including your server, your site, and various external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the configuration process)
Let’s take a brief look at these steps.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your web server that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your site can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both good and unwanted traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like configuring spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure various external sites.
External Sites
The purpose of 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 automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external services have been added to your traffic system, content linking back to your website will get automatically published on these platforms. Your business will receive additional exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of these external sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site to help save time 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 Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important data, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your Google Search Console account and site details are set up, this information can be used to 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 site’s traffic performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your account, you can add traffic monitoring code to all of your web pages in WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and send data automatically to many other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account and site data with Bing are set up, use your account information to integrate and automate traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers both a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which various WordPress plugins can access. 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 the next installment of this series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need your social accounts set up before you can configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and bring new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts set up with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to many social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse page.
There are many different sites and platforms you can incorporate into your own traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site
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.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – 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 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 on this page can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to get the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as your traffic system is concerned, however, the main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to instantly notify various update services whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings enable your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring permalinks)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, see this tutorial: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using SEO-Friendly URLs
WordPress – Traffic Generation Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that improve traffic generation
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot ignore the importance of securing your web site.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
More information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving how search engines find, crawl and index your web pages …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress Plugin)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your site’s SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find, classify and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website with WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing to your site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins allow you to select which 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 followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Settings – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring layout and design aspects of your website, many themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality 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 users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure For Increased Traffic Results
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you do any kind of business online, you need to make sure that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
WordPress Tags & Categories
Post tags and post categories help search engines better organize and index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s categories and tags during the Website Planning Stages.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover your online 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 thing. Although Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins 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.
404 Page – An Additional Source Of Traffic!
When visitors enter the wrong web address or click on a link pointing to a destination on your website that no longer exists, they are presented with a 404 Not Found error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your web server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your website has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is publish new content regularly to start generating more traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise required to perform the configuration stage of the traffic automation process typically takes some website professionals a long time 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 article in our series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive tutorial series designed to help you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic automatically with a WordPress website and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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