Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is post web content on a regular basis to automatically start generating more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of this process. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration phase of the traffic system. We explain how to configure a WordPress site so you can ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing when you publish new content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With competition becoming increasingly more difficult businesses are looking for any and every advantage they can that can help you get better results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over other competitors. For business owners, an expertly configured website means having an immediate competitive advantage from the very beginning.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with 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, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here’s a little story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All was running smoothly in the widget manufacturing plant when all of a sudden, things ground to a stop.
No one could figure out what happened and so the manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately went to the control box. After staring silently at the wiring board for no more than 3 minutes or so, the expert then took out a teensy-weensy hammer and made a single tap about two inches from the left corner of the control unit.
Immediately, the assembly line came back to life.
The manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The factory manager picked up the phone and called the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged such a large amount of money for less than 5 minutes work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to be compensated fairly for years spent building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your blog set up so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other web properties would be immediately 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 website?)
Although the solution to many problems may seem ridiculously simple once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than just installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party accounts you need to set up to get desired results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to ensure that processes will work as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring one or two plugins, configuring some settings in your admin area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many components including your web server, your site, and various external sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we were to create a simplified diagram of the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your web server that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your website may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like integrating spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step is to set up and configure a number of external sites and/or online services.
External Services
The idea behind setting up external sites is that all of your content gets posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it gets automatically distributed to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external services have been added to your network, content with links pointing back to your website will get automatically syndicated to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and business will be given added exposure to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some of these external sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to speed up the process 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 Search Console
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of essential data, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your account has been with Google have been set up, your account details can be used with web 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 site’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your account and site details, account information can be easily integrated with WordPress using a plugin and and fed to other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account has been with Bing are set up, the account details can be used to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great 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 generation system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social accounts set up before you can 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 attract new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts set up with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we discuss some of these tools in greater detail during the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your account.
There are many different platforms you can add to your own traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring WordPress Settings
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Screen)
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 intentionally configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section …
(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 on this page can influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to read 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 your traffic system is concerned, however, the main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly notify various update services whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways your permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
We have created a detailed tutorial on using WP permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Traffic Plugin Settings – Configuration
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to attract more visitors to your site
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is immune from cyber-attacks.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and bots.
More info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving your website’s SEO)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find and index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with others online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing features to your site easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins let you specify which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress – 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 the design and layout of your site, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing features 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 that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Configuring Other WordPress Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online, it’s important that your website is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices.
(Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help understanding how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website, see this article:
WordPress Post Tags And Post Categories
WordPress post tags and post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.
(Post categories help search engines index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and post categories should be reviewed and set up during the Website Planning Stage.
When looking at ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags you have set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts 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 traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although search engines like Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Forget This!
When online visitors type in the wrong web address into their web browser or click on a dead link, they will typically be greeted with a 404 Not Found page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover 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 Phase – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is post web content regularly to begin attracting new traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some web developers months to learn.
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 addressed in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This article is part of an article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business using a WordPress-powered website and proven web 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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