Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated traffic machine using WordPress.
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 web site, all you have to do is publish new content regularly to automatically begin bringing traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started 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 website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic system. You will understand what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different. You will also learn just what type of work is required to ensure that when all is fully set up and configured, you will get new visitors automatically simply by posting web content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive and are exploring any opportunity they can to get better results online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives your business a significant competitive advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Stage
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here is a simple way to explain the main difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence plus an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing story.
A Semi-True Story …
All is going fine in the widget plant when suddenly, things grinds to a complete stop.
As no one can figure out what’s wrong, the plant manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrives and, without saying a word, heads out immediately to the control box. After staring at the wires and circuitry for no more than 3 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a tiny hammer from his tool belt and makes a gentle tap near the right edge of the box.
Immediately, the plant starts working again.
The manager is grateful and relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager receives a service bill for $5,000.
Bewildered to the point of feeling outrage, the factory manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why the expert has charged them such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives and is placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors consistently to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning and no one on the business had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for investing years building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your website configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
Although experts often make complicated solutions look simple, 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 basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which 3rd-party services need to be set up to get certain outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured to make sure things will work as planned, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved and time-consuming. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a solution, clicking on a button or two, or configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of various different components such as your web server, your site, and various third-party sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a better look at these steps.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your web-hosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your website can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for both good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess and 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites or online services.
External Services
The purpose of adding external sites is that all of your content should be published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, syndicate automatically to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external platforms have been added to your traffic system, content with links pointing back to your site will be automatically published on these platforms. Your site will receive additional exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site 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 Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with useful data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your Google Webmasters account, your information can be used with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, your account data can be easily integrated with WordPress via a simple plugin used with other applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account with Bing, you can use the details to integrate and automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress provides users with a hosted and a self-hosted 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 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 this into your automated traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your various social media and social bookmarking accounts before you can 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 drive new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts and profile pages with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose the ones that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(There are loads of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add a feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse page.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications you can add to your traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress 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 set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global WordPress Settings
Your WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Section)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have specifically chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress takes care of the rest …
(Notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
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 readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays 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 site to get 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 here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to automatically ping various update services when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
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 sites 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways your SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on setting up permalinks, go here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
WP Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help improve traffic generation
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is completely safe from being attacked by hackers.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and bots.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also lets you specify how to present your content to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with WordPress plugins)
There are loads of social sharing plugins available for WordPress users.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to select 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 likes), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which users can unlock by liking your page.
Theme Settings
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 layout and design aspects of your website, many themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons and enabling the feature …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure For Increased Traffic Flow
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your site remains compliant with all government legal requirements.
(Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Categories And Tags
Post categories & tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your pages.
(WordPress categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and post categories should be set up during the Website Planning Process.
When considering ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and 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 for users, it can also help external sites find your web content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Only search engines can understand an XML sitemap. Although Google will index your site just using an XML sitemap (which plugins 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.
404 Error Page – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When visitors type in the wrong web address into their browser or click on links pointing to pages on your website that no longer exist, they are greeted with an error page …
(A 404 Error Page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured to funnel visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do to automatically attract web traffic is add new content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many web professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly 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 Three
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online using a WordPress website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy and quick to implement.
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