Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic generation machine using WordPress.
In Part One 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 traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is publish new content on a consistent basis to start attracting traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will discuss the configuration phase of the traffic system. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site so you can attract new traffic automatically just by consistently adding content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as their greatest challenge online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive and are exploring every advantage available to get better results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off with a flying start from the moment their website is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a 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 tool!)
Not only is additional work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let me illustrate this point with a joke.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Things were humming along in the gizmo workshop when everything ground to a sudden halt.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert walked immediately towards the control box. After staring at the wiring diagrams for no more than 5 minutes, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy hammer from his utility belt and made a very gentle tap near the left-hand side of the box.
Immediately, the assembly line came back to life.
The manager was greatly overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager received a request of payment for services for the sum of $5,000.
The factory manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged such a ridiculously high fee for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived and was placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one in the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to be compensated fairly for investing years developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress website configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other web 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 experts often make difficult solutions look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party services you need to set up and activate to achieve desired results
- Which options need to be configured in order to make sure processes will run to plan, 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 so technically difficult, it can be quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a solution, clicking a button … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different components including your web hosting server, your web site, and various third-party sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simplified diagram showing the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Configuring The Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings in your web server that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic you will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like configuring spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure a number of external sites or online services.
Configuring External Sites
The idea behind adding external sites is that all of your content will be published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will be automatically distributed to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external sites to your network, content linking back to your website is automatically syndicated to these platforms. Your business will be given exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some third-party sites and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site 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:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of important information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account is set up, your account details can be used with 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 website’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data have been set up, traffic monitoring information can be integrated with WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and and fed to other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account and site details are set up, the account information can be used with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. 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 some great features, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your web traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site.
You should set up accounts and profile pages with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose those that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(You can post your content to lots of social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse social feed.
There are various technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your web traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress 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 of the important points.
WordPress Settings
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Section)
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 purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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 readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to get 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 traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to instantly notify the list of update services whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
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 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings enable WordPress to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
For a detailed tutorial on setting up permalinks, go here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO Using SEO-Friendly URLs
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to attract more visitors to your site
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot ignore the importance of website security.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find, classify and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with members of their social communities can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social features to your site easily using WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social plugins let you select which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
WP Traffic Features In Themes
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 design and layout of your website, some themes also include options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as clicking a few buttons to configure your options and enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Other Areas
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online, it’s important that your site is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Tags And Post Categories
WordPress post categories and tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s post tags and categories during the Website Planning Stage.
When looking at ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find more of your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for site 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 Google can index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Configure Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When visitors type in the wrong URL or click on a dead link, they are presented with an error page (known as a 404 error page) …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found page)
A 404 Not Found page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up in your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website or blog expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do is post content on a consistent basis to begin attracting new traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some web developers a long time to acquire.
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 section of the series.
This is the end of Section 3
To continue reading this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business online with a WordPress-driven website and proven web marketing strategies.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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