Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically generate web traffic is add new content on a consistent basis!)
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 site, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic system. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to get visitors automatically when you start to add new content on your website.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale and are exploring every advantage they can to improve their results online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge competitive advantage. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off with a flying start from the moment their website is launched.
The Configuration Phase Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to describe the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
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 expertise.
To illustrate this point here’s a little story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All was running smoothly in the widget factory when all of a sudden, the equipment ground to a halt.
No one could figure out what happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
The expert arrived soon afterward and, without saying a word, headed immediately towards the main control box. After staring at the schematics for 5 minutes, the expert then took out a tiny hammer and made a very gentle tap about 3 inches from the right-hand side of the control unit.
Immediately, everything came back to life.
The floor manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager received an invoice for the amount of $5,000.
The manager picked up the phone and rang the expert, demanding to know why the expert had charged them so much for so little time delivering such a minimal amount of work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived 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 visitors to their sites.
How much money did the widget plant stand to lose when the machines stopped working and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for spending years developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your site set up so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social media and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
Although many experts often make difficult situations and problems look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than just installing a website and configuring a few settings. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to get desired functionalities on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up to achieve specific results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to ensure that things will function exactly as you have envisioned, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing a piece of software, configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many different components such as your server, your WordPress site, and a number of third-party sites and online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your web-hosting account that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your webhosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your site may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess and 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step is to set up and configure a number of external sites.
Integration With External Solutions
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all content should be posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, radiate outwards to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external sites into your configuration, content pointing back to your website will be automatically posted to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social media sites, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and business will be given additional exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of the web properties and online platforms will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings 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 Search Console – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of essential data, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account with Google Webmasters, you can use your information with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress 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 engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your up your account and site data has been entered, you can add visitor tracking code to WordPress via a simple Google Analytics plugin and feed data instantly to various other 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. After setting up your account and entering site details, use your account information to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts before you can integrate these with 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 get new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and pages set up with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we cover some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging web platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse social feed.
There are various solutions you can add to your traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Update Services)
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 …
(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 traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to view the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to notify all the update services you have listed whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
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 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)
Permalinks
Permalinks enable your site to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways your permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using permalinks in WordPress here: Configuring WordPress Permalinks
WP Traffic Generation Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to attract more visitors to your site
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your websites is something you cannot ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to botnets and hackers.
More info:
- How To Prevent Malicious Cyber-Attacks On Your WordPress Blog From Hackers & Bots With Blog Defender
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website …
(WordPress Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to 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 site using WordPress plugins)
There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social plugins let you choose which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update 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 site which users can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress – Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring layout and design elements of your website, many themes also give you built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a free theme) have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as clicking a few buttons to enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic System – Additional Configuration
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do business online, you need to ensure that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
We have created a detailed article on adding legal pages to WordPress here:
WordPress Tags & Categories
Post tags & categories help search engines classify and index your pages, which helps you get more traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your web pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal results.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications discover your website content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. HTML site maps are web pages that link to all other content on your site and provide visitors with a an understandable representation of how your content is organized, whereas XML sitemaps are mostly code that only search bots can read. Although Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page – Another Source Of Web Traffic!
When visitors searching online for your site enter the wrong web address or click on hyperlinks pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they will typically be presented with an error page …
(A 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do to bring traffic is post new content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website professionals a long time to acquire.
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 explained in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section Three
To keep reading, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business using a WordPress website and proven web marketing strategies.
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