Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated web traffic generation machine using WordPress.
In Part One of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is add great content on a consistent basis to automatically begin attracting web traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this section, we will look at the configuration phase of this process. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site so you can automatically drive web traffic when you begin to publish web content to your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With competition making business survival increasingly more difficult businesses are exploring every advantage they believe will help them increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over the competition. With an expertly configured WordPress site, you have an immediate advantage from the very start.
The Configuration Process Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to understand the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take extra labor 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 little story.
Knowing Where To Tap
Things were running smoothly in the widget assembly factory when everything suddenly ground to a stop.
As no one could figure out what happened, the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert immediately walked to the main control box. After staring silently at the circuit board for 5 minutes or less, the expert then took out a tiny hammer from his shirt pocket and made a very gentle tap near the bottom-right edge of the box.
Immediately, the whole workshop lit up and began working once more.
The floor manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The manager called the expert, demanding to know why they were charged such an exorbitant fee for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work. He then 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 #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one in the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for years spent developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your website set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social networks and dozens of other traffic-generating online 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 website?)
While the solution to many challenges is often quite simple once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few settings. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which services need to be set up to get specific results
- Which settings you need to configure in order to make sure things will work as expected, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved and complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring one or two plugins, tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration phase is a process that involves your web server, your website or blog, and a number of third-party sites or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the configuration process)
Let’s take a better look at these steps.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your webhosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic you will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure various third-party sites or online services.
External Accounts
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all of your content will get published from one central location (your site) and from there, it will be automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After adding these external services to your network, content with links pointing back to your website will be automatically fed to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social networks, even to users of the platform itself. Your site will then be given additional exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some third-party sites and solutions will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to help 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 before configuring your site’s settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with useful information, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account and site details have been set up, use this information to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings 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 performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up your Google Analytics account, you can add visitor tracking information to all of your web pages in WordPress via a simple Google Analytics plugin and feed data instantly to various other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account is set up, you can use your details with traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your traffic system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your various social media accounts before you can 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 social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
You should set up accounts and profile pages with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with and syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add a feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your page.
There are various solutions that can be incorporated into your own web traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress – Global Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services box
By default, only one service is available …
(Update Services)
You can 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 …
(You can 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 summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to view the rest of the content from summaries, 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 check box is enabled or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly ping the list of update services whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow your site to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
If you need help setting up WordPress permalinks, see this tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help your site generate more traffic
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
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, you simply cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your site.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
Go here for more information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO Plugin)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your 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 easily add social sharing to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing to your website easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins let you 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 share plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Traffic Theme Settings – Configuration
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 layout and design elements of your website, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as clicking a few buttons to enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Additional Configuration
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic system configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your site is compliant with government regulations.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
For a detailed article about why it’s important to have a compliant website, go here:
WordPress Categories & Tags
Post categories and tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your web pages.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s categories and tags should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Process.
When considering ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications discover more of your website content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin 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 Site’s 404 Page
When online visitors type in the wrong web address into their web browser or click on links pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they will normally be presented with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional web 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 on your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do to automatically generate more web traffic is post web content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform this process can take some website professionals months to acquire.
Once you have 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 section of our series.
This is the end of Part 3
To keep reading, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an article series designed to help small business owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively and drive traffic organically using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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