Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to attract traffic is publish content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we discussed critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this section of the series, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured to start driving new traffic automatically when you begin to add web content on your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive worldwide and are looking for any opportunity they can to increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage. Having an expertly configured website gives you an immediate competitive advantage from the very start.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to describe the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing little story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All is going well in the gizmo workshop when all of a sudden, the machinery stops.
As no one can figure out what’s gone wrong, the floor manager decides to call in an expert.
Soon afterward, the expert arrives and, without uttering a word, immediately goes to the main control box. After staring silently at the wires and circuitry for 3 minutes, the expert then takes out a teensy-weensy hammer and makes a single tap about three inches from the right-hand side of the unit.
Immediately, everything springs to life once again.
The plant manager is delighted as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager receives a bill for $5,000.
Confused and bewildered, the factory manager picks up the phone and calls the expert. Why did he charge them such a ludicrous fee for so little time delivering such minimal amount of work? He then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive visitors to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to be compensated fairly for having spent years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your site fully set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although the solution to many problems often seems ridiculously simple once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring settings for a client. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which services you need to set up and activate to achieve specific results
- Which options need to be configured in order to make sure things function as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. This is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a solution, clicking on a button or two, or tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of various different components including your web hosting server, your website, and various external sites and/or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simplified flowchart of the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a better look at these steps.
Your Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your business will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for both bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like implementing spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up 404 error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
Once your server settings have been checked and configured, the next step is to set up and configure various third-party sites and/or online solutions.
External Web Properties & Accounts – Configuration
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all content will be published from one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get automatically distributed to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After adding these external platforms to your system, content linking back to your website gets automatically posted to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and website will be exposed to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some sites and services 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, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Search Console
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important data, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account with Google, use your details with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic results, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data have been set up, you can add traffic tracking code to WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and feed data instantly to many other useful applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account and entering site details, the account information can be used with traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated web traffic generation system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social accounts set up in order to integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and attract new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(There are lots of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your social feed.
There are various platforms that can be incorporated into your traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a strategy 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.
Configuring Your WordPress Site For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections 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 one of the most important and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section lists only one entry …
(Writing Settings – WordPress 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 and WordPress will do the rest …
(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 readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to get 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 most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress 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, do not check this box …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although the settings in this section 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 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
Your Permalink settings enable your site to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
We have created a detailed tutorial on using WordPress permalinks here: Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to attract more visitors to your site
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site 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, securing your sites is something you simply cannot ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to attacks from hackers and botnets.
For more details, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(WordPress Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social 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.
(You can add social features to your site easily using WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing to your website easily with free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social sharing plugins let you 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 shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other WordPress Settings
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site stays compliant with all government laws and regulations.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
We have written a detailed article about how to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website or blog here:
Post Tags & Post Categories
Tags and post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your website.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s categories and tags should be discussed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Phases.
When configuring your website to automate and improve web traffic, 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.
Add A WordPress 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 sites find more of your online content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although Google will 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.
404 Page – Don’t Forget This!
When online users type in the wrong web address or click on links pointing to pages on your site that no longer exist, they will typically be greeted with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 page) …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do to begin attracting more traffic is post fresh content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise required to perform this process typically takes many website professionals months to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next section of the WordPress Traffic System 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 series of articles aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business online and drive traffic sustainably using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven online marketing methods.
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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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