Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article 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 site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically start driving traffic is add great content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we looked at 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 website, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. We will show you why an expertly configured site is different from a professionally configured website, and just what type of work needs to be done to make sure that when all is set up and configured, you can automatically start getting traffic simply by publishing web content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as their greatest challenge online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive worldwide and are looking for any advantage they believe will get better results online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand is a huge competitive advantage. For business owners, an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Stage Is What Makes All 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’s a simple way to understand the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take additional labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Everything was going well in the gizmo workshop when all of a sudden, things ground to a stop.
As no one could figure out what went wrong, the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrived and, without saying a word, immediately went to the main control box. After staring at the schematics for no more than 2 minutes or so, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny little hammer from his utility belt and made a gentle tap about two and half cm from the right side of the box.
Immediately, everything sprang to life.
The plant manager was greatly overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The manager picked up the phone and rang the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? 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 immediately assess and avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a blog fully set up so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although experts often make complicated things look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few internal settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party accounts need to be set up and activated to get certain outcomes
- Which options you need to configure in order to ensure that things work how you have planned, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing one or two plugins, clicking a button, or tweaking some settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different components including your server, your site, and various external sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If all the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes. What we are talking about, is tweaking settings in your server that affect how your website will handle all web traffic …
(In 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 website can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like configuring server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and services.
External Services
The basic idea of adding external sites is that all content will get posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external platforms have been added to your configuration, content pointing back to your site gets automatically added to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and website will benefit from added exposure online, helping you tap into a new audience and source of traffic.
Some of these sites and online solutions will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to help save time 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 WordPress site:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of useful information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
Once your Google Webmasters account and site details are set up, you can use this information with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. 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, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your account and site data, you can add tracking information to WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and feed data automatically to many other applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account and site details with Bing Webmaster Tools have been set up, the account details can be used to automate web traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress provides users with a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your traffic generation system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts in order to 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 visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are many 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 with your system and/or content syndication tools (we will review some of these tools in greater detail further below and during the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse page.
There are many different solutions you can add to your traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Site Configuration
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 WordPress Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As described below the Update Services 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, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services field
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(WordPress Update Services)
WordPress lets you 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 your content gets seen by visitors 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 summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to view the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to ping all the update services you have listed when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress 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 blogs linked to from your content, 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 WordPress to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks Section)
The examples below show some of the ways your permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, see this step-by-step tutorial: Setting Up Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring Settings – WordPress Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
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, securing your websites is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to botnets and hackers.
For more details, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving the way search engines like Google find, crawl and index your web pages …
(WP Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online 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 features to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site with free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social share plugins let you select 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 shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages 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 site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, some themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) allow you to configure options and settings for better traffic results)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to configure your options and enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Other Steps
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the things that need to be configured 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 both good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
We have created a detailed article on why it’s important to have a compliant website here:
WordPress Post Tags & Post Categories
Post tags and post categories help search engines index your website, which helps to increase traffic.
(Post categories help search engines index your website, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s post 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 benefits.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A visitor site map that displays all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover more of your site’s 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 search engines like Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When online users enter the wrong URL into their browser or click on links pointing to destinations on your website that no longer exist, they are greeted with a 404 Not Found error page …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 Not Found page can be configured into a useful source of traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to begin bringing new traffic is publish content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise required to perform this phase of the traffic automation process can take many web developers months to learn.
Once you have 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 article in our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part 3
To continue reading, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively with a WordPress website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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