Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generating machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we provided an overview of 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 site, all you have to do is publish web content on a regular basis to attract more traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. 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 website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration phase of the traffic system. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured to automatically begin attracting new visitors whenever you publish new content on your web site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With competition making business survival increasingly more difficult businesses are looking for every advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge advantage. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website allows their business to get off with a flying start as soon as their website 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 builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s one way to understand the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let me illustrate this with a story.
A Semi-True Story …
Everything is moving along in the widget plant when things grind to a sudden stop.
As no one can figure out what’s wrong, the plant manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrives and, without saying a word, walks straight towards the control box. After staring at the circuit board for about 5 minutes, the expert then produces a tiny little hammer and makes a gentle tap about 1 inch from the left side of the box.
Immediately, the whole workshop lights up and starts working again.
The plant manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager receives a service bill for $5,000.
Feeling angry, the manager calls the expert. Why were they expected to pay so much for so little time delivering such a minimal amount of work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives and is placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive traffic to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning and no one in the business had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for having invested years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your blog configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other web properties would be instantly 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 website?)
While many experts often make complicated solutions look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to work things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which services you need to set up to get certain outcomes
- Which options you need to configure to make sure everything works to plan, etc.
(Generating web 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 time-consuming. It’s not as simple as installing a piece of software, tweaking some settings in your dashboard area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web server, your website, and a number of external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram of all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps.
Your Server
We’re not talking 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 you will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your website may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like implementing 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 email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
Once your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites.
Integration With External Services
The basic idea of setting up external sites is that all of your content gets posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it gets distributed automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external services into your setup, content linked back to your website will get automatically fed to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your website will be given additional exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of these sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site to 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 before configuring your site:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of essential data, tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account with Google, use the details with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic results, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up your Google Analytics account, you can add your account information to all of your web pages in WordPress using plugins and feed data instantly to many other online applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account and entering site details with Bing Webmaster Tools, use this information to automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great 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 traffic generation system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site.
You should have profiles set up with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can post your content to many social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your page.
There are many different solutions that can be added 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.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure WordPress.
Configuring Your WordPress Site
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 of the important areas.
WordPress Settings
The WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have specifically configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 have an influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears 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 site to get the rest of the content from a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to instantly notify your update services list whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Section)
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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks Screen)
Here are some of the ways permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using WP permalinks here: Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
WP Traffic Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help improve traffic generation
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, web security 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 information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins help increase traffic by improving your site’s ability to rank better in search engines)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with members of their own social communities can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website using WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using WordPress plugins.
Many social share plugins allow you to specify which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which users can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress Theme Settings – Configuration
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring layout and design elements of your website, many themes also include 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 themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to configure your options and enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other WordPress Settings
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do any kind of business online, you need to ensure that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
To learn more about why it’s important to have a compliant website, see this article:
Post Tags & Categories
Post tags and post categories help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which helps you get more traffic.
(Categories help search engines better classify and index your website, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s categories and tags should be reviewed and set up during the Website Planning Process.
When considering 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.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
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 sites 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 different things. Although search engines like Google will index your site just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin 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 Lose Traffic!
When visitors searching for your website type in the wrong URL or click on links pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they will typically be greeted with an error page (known as a 404 error page) …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web 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 allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is publish web content regularly to attract traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some website developers 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 can be automated. This step is covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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