Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is add fresh content on a consistent basis to automatically start driving traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start 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 where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site so you can ensure that web traffic will automatically start flowing when you begin to add new content on a consistent basis on your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business becoming ever more competitive, it’s worth exploring any and every advantage that can help you get better results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge advantage over other competitors. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to explain the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take additional work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
Allow me to illustrate this with a little story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Things were running smoothly in the gizmo-making factory when all machinery suddenly ground to a complete stop.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
The expert arrived within in less than 20 minutes and, without uttering a word, walked immediately towards the control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for about 2 minutes, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny little hammer and made a single tap near the right-hand side of the unit.
Immediately, every machine in the assembly line started working again.
The plant manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged such a ludicrous fee for less than five minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive visitors 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 in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for years spent building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress site set up so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other online properties would be instantly 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 site?)
While experts often make difficult situations and problems look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party services need to be set up to achieve specific outcomes
- Which settings you need to configure in order to ensure that everything will work how you have planned, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved and complicated. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing a solution, clicking a button … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many components including your web hosting server, your site, and various external sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we create a simple flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these steps.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your web server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your site will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like integrating spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step is to set up and configure various external sites and/or online solutions.
External Sites
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all content should be published from one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, syndicate automatically to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external platforms have been added to your network, content with links pointing back to your site will get 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 exposed to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some sites and online platforms will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress settings to help speed up the configuration process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts before configuring your site’s settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with essential data, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your Google Webmasters account has been set up, the information can be used with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing campaigns, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up Google Analytics, you can add your account information to all of your web pages in WordPress via a simple Google Analytics plugin and feed data automatically to other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account has been set up, your details can be used with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers both a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. 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 the next installment of this series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need your various 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 get new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and pages set up with all the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can You can syndicate your content to many social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will cover some of these tools in greater detail further below and in the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add a feed from your website …
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 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 would like to explore this area further and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress – Configuring Your 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
By default, your WordPress administration area includes a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As described 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 discourage 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 text box
By default, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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
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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
This section affects how your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers 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 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.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to notify various update services when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(Global Settings – 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 sites 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings Section)
Here are some of the ways search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
If you need help setting up WP permalinks, see this tutorial: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO Using SEO-Friendly URLs
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add almost every type of functionality to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No blog is safe from cyber-attacks.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(SEO plugins help increase traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to find and 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.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with others online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing to your website easily with free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social share plugins let you specify which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress – Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring layout and design elements of your site, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) allow you to configure settings for improved traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you do business online, it’s important that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Tags & Post Categories
Tags & categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.
(WordPress categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your website.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and post categories should be set up during the Website Planning Stages.
When looking at ways to automate and improve 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 find more of your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although Google will index your pages just using 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.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When visitors searching online for your website type in the wrong web address or click on a hyperlink pointing to a destination on your website that no longer exists, they are presented with a 404 Not Found page …
(A 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do is publish great content regularly to attract traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and knowledge required to perform this process can take some website professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly 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 series.
This is the end of Section Three
To keep reading this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-driven website and proven web marketing methods.
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