Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is post great content consistently to automatically begin bringing more traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. The focus of this section is to help you understand what makes an expertly configured site different, and how much work needs to be done to ensure that when everything is set up and fully configured, you will bring visitors automatically as you start to post web content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as their greatest challenge online. With business getting increasingly more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth exploring any and every opportunity you can to get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage. Having an expertly configured website gives you a significant advantage from the word “go”.
The Configuration Phase Is What Makes All The Difference
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 describe the key difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take additional labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this point here’s a joke.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All is going well in the widget manufacturing plant when all of a sudden, everything stops working.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
The expert arrives within the hour and, without uttering a word, heads out immediately to the control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for no more than 2 minutes, the expert then produces a tiny little hammer from his shirt pocket and makes a gentle tap about 3 cm from the left side of the control unit.
Immediately, all the machinery inside the plant comes back to life.
The manager is grateful and relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Outraged and furious, the manager calls the expert. Demanding to know why they were expected to pay so much for so little time spent delivering 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 intray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one in the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for spending years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a blog set up so all you have to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be automatically 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?)
While the solution to many problems may seem quite easy in hindsight, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to figure things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than simply installing a website and configuring settings for clients. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up and activated to get certain outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to ensure that everything will function as expected, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved. This is because it’s not as simple as installing a plugin, clicking on a button or two, or configuring some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your server, your website, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we were to create a simple diagram of the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Configuring The Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about tweaking settings in your web hosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your business will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like configuring server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites and online services.
External Services
The purpose of adding external sites is that all of your content is posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it radiates outwards automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external sites have been added to your configuration, content linked back to your site will be automatically fed to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social media accounts, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and site 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’s settings to 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:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of important data, SEO tools and reports about your website.
Once your account has been with Google have been set up, use your details to integrate and automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, you can add your account code to all of your web pages in WordPress using plugins and send data automatically to various other applications.
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, this information can be used with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers users the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, 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 4 of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and get new visitors to your site)
You will need your social 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 attract new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have set up profiles 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 the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you 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 page.
There are various sites and platforms you can add to your web traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration plan 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 – Configuring Your Website For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services field
By default, this section includes only one entry …
(Writing Settings – WordPress 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 and WordPress takes care of 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 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 influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your content 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.
The most important setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly ping various update services when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Global Settings – 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 blogs 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow your site to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks Section)
Here are some of the options for configuring your post permalinks …
(Configuring permalinks)
If you need help setting up WordPress permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to attract more visitors to your site
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with the effects of 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, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your site.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnets and hackers.
Go here for more details:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to find and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website with free or inexpensive plugins)
There are many free or inexpensive social sharing plugins available for WordPress users.
Many social sharing plugins let you choose which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default 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 pages which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WP Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, some themes also include built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a free theme) allow you to configure options and settings for better traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Additional Configuration Steps For WordPress
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online, you need to ensure that your website remains compliant with government laws and regulations.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Categories & Post Tags
WordPress categories & tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your website.
(WordPress categories help search engines index your website, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s post tags and categories during the Website Planning Phase.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find more of your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although 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 can result in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your WordPress 404 Page Not Found
When online users enter the wrong web address or click on hyperlinks pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they are greeted with a 404 Not Found error page …
(A 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover 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 several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your site fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is add new content regularly to begin attracting web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some website professionals months 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 article in our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 3
To continue reading, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively with a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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