Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically start attracting traffic is add fresh content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We explained the best way to start 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 website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will look at the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. We explain what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different than a professionally configured website, and what kind of work needs to be done to ensure that when all is fully configured, you can get new visitors automatically simply by publishing new content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as their greatest challenge online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive on a global scale and businesses are looking for every opportunity they can to improve their results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over the competition. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s a simple way to explain the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a 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 type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an anecdote.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All is going well in the gizmo assembly factory when all machinery suddenly stops.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the plant manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
The expert arrives within the hour and, without saying a word, immediately heads towards the control box. After staring silently at the circuit board for no more than 5 minutes or so, the expert then produces a teeny-weeny hammer and makes a very gentle tap near the left-hand edge of the control unit.
Immediately, the whole workshop lights up and springs back to life.
The manager is grateful and relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Feeling angry, the manager calls the expert. Why were they expected to pay so much for so little time delivering such a minimal amount of work? He then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives 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 consistently drive visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the machines stopped functioning and no one in the factory floor had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to get paid fairly for having spent years developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP blog fully set up and configured so all you have to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other traffic-generating 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 attracting new visitors to your site?)
While the solution to many problems often seems quite easy once it’s been implemented, 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 a few basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which services you need to set up and activate to achieve specific outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured in order to make sure processes will run as expected, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite involved and complicated. It’s not as simple as installing and configuring a piece of software, configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web hosting server, your website or blog, and a number of third-party sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Server Configuration
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 server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic you may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like configuring server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites.
External Sites
The basic concept of setting up external sites is that all of your content gets posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it then gets distributed automatically to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external services have been added to your traffic system, content linking back to your website will get automatically added to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content will then be exposed to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some third-party sites and solutions will need to be set up before configuring your site to help speed up the configuration process 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 WordPress settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with important data, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your Google Webmaster Tools account, this information can be used with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, account code can be added to all web pages in WordPress using a plugin used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account and entering site data, the account details can be used with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. 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 Four of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social accounts set up before you can integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring 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 the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick those that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can post your content to lots of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress blog 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 visitors can follow your RebelMouse account.
There are various technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your web traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
WordPress Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section lists 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 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 on this page can influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds 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 blog to get the rest of the content from a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to notify all the update services you have listed in the Update Services box when new posts get 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 unchecked …
(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 blogs 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)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring permalinks)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot ignore the importance of securing your web sites.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and bots.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web content easily indexable …
(WordPress Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with others online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can add social features to your website easily using WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you choose 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 shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your pages 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 grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, many themes also provide options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Other Areas To Consider
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your website complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
WordPress Categories & Tags
Post tags and post categories help search engines index your website, which helps you get more traffic.
(WordPress categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s categories and tags during the Website Planning Phases.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
HTML Site Map
A site map that lists all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites discover more of your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Only search engines can interpret an XML sitemap. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from 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 results in increased traffic.
404 Page – An Additional Source Of Web Traffic!
When visitors type in the wrong web address into their browser or click on a dead link, they will typically be presented with an error – page not found message …
(A 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 Error 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 on your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is publish web content on a consistent basis to begin bringing new traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various elements and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration phase of the traffic automation process typically takes many website developers months to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as you can. This step is covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help website owners learn how to grow their business online using a WordPress website and proven online marketing strategies.
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