Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part One of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically start generating new traffic is post web content regularly!)
In Part 2, we looked at critical setup decisions. We explained 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 website, and what to do if your existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration stage of this process. The focus of this section is to help you understand why an expertly configured WordPress site is different, and how much work is required to make sure that when everything is fully set up and configured, you will attract traffic automatically when you begin posting fresh content on your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business becoming so much more competitive worldwide, it’s worth learning about any advantage available to get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous competitive advantage. For business owners, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start from the moment their site is launched.
The Configuration Process 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 an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here is a simple way to understand the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Everything was going just fine in the gizmo-making plant when suddenly, things stopped.
As no one could figure out what happened, the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately went to the main control box. After staring at the box for less than 2 minutes or so, the expert then produced a little hammer from his utility belt and made a single tap about one cm from the bottom-left side of the control unit.
Immediately, everything returned once again to normal.
The floor manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The factory manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the machines stopped working and no one in the business 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 and expertise that enabled him to immediately repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WP web site configured so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social networks and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be automatically 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?)
Although the solution to many problems often seems quite simple in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few basic settings. It 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 you need to set up to achieve desired outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured to ensure that things will work as planned, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved and complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing a solution, clicking a button … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of many different parts including your web hosting server, your web site, and various external sites or online services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some 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 configuration phase)
Let’s take a brief look at these areas.
Configuring The Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your server that affect how you 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 traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your website can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like implementing spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites.
External Accounts
The idea behind choosing external sites is that all of your content should be posted to a central location (your site) and from there, be automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external services into your configuration, content linked back to your website is automatically syndicated to these platforms. Your content will then be exposed to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some of the sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings 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 before configuring your site:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with important data, tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site data, you can use the account information to integrate and automate web traffic 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 performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account and site data, your account data can be easily integrated with WordPress via a simple plugin used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And 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 data with Bing, your details can be used with traffic 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 a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your automated traffic system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media 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 accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose those that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(You can post your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your social feed.
There are many different solutions you can add to your traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(WordPress 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 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 box
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section includes only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you 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 …
(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 visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to read the rest of the content from excerpts, 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 checkbox is ticked or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to instantly notify various update services whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although discussion settings 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 Section)
Permalinks
Permalinks enable your site to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings Screen)
Here are some of the ways permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
We have created a detailed tutorial on using WP permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring Settings – WP Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site 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, securing your sites is something you cannot ignore.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and bots.
More info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving your site’s SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly 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 index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with their social networks can help boost traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social plugins allow you to select which 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 shares), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which users can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features – Configuration
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 design and layout aspects of your website, many themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure For Improved Traffic
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, you need to make sure that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
Post Categories And Tags
Post 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 web pages.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Visitor 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 site’s content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although Google can index your pages just from 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 can result in increased traffic.
Your WordPress 404 Error Page
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong URL into their browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your website that no longer exist, they will typically be presented with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do to automatically begin bringing more traffic is publish content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration stage of the traffic automation process typically takes some website professionals months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is explained in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively with a WordPress-powered website and proven online marketing strategies.
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