Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to begin bringing more traffic is publish new content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. We explain how to configure a WordPress site to ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing when you begin to post content regularly to your web site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by business owners as their greatest challenge online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive and businesses are researching any and every advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over the competition. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the very beginning.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a 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 take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s a simple way to explain the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is extra labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
Allow me to illustrate this point with a story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Everything is moving along in the widget-making manufacturing plant when all of a sudden, things stops.
No one can figure out what went wrong and so the manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately goes to the control box. After staring silently at the schematics for about 5 minutes or less, the expert then produces a teensy-weensy hammer and makes a single tap about 3 cm from the right-hand edge of the control unit.
Immediately, everything springs back to life.
The manager is relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Bewildered and bordering on a sense of outrage, the factory manager picks up the phone and calls the expert. Why had he charged them such a ludicrous fee for less than 5 minutes work? He then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives and is placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to be compensated fairly for investing years building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WP website or blog fully set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites and dozens of other online 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?)
While many experts often make complex situations and problems look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than simply installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve certain outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to ensure that things work as envisioned, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically difficult, it can be quite complicated. It’s not just about installing and configuring a plugin, clicking on a button or two, or tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your server, your website, and a number of external sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your web-hosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web-hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your website will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like configuring server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up 404 error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
Once your server settings have been checked and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and services.
3rd-Party Sites Integration
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all content gets posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it then gets distributed automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external sites to your traffic network, content with links pointing back to your website is automatically published on these platforms. Your content will be exposed to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some of these third-party sites will need to be 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:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful data, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site data with Google Webmaster Tools, you can use this information with web traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data are set up, account information can be added to WordPress via a simple plugin used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account and entering site details, this information can be used to automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. 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 a number of useful 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 automated traffic system in the next installment 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have set up profiles with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online platforms and content aggregators that can act as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse website.
There are various sites and platforms you can incorporate into your web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
Configuring WordPress
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress – Global Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated below the Update Services section title,
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, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 have an influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s choice 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.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to notify all the update services you have listed in the Update Services field whenever 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 …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Section)
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 content, 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 Screen)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your post permalinks …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
If you need help setting up WordPress permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: Changing WordPress Permalinks
WordPress – Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add almost every type of functionality to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve 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 website 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 cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your website or blog.
(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 botnet and hacker attacks.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(WP Plugins For SEO – Yoast SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with members of their own social communities can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social share plugins let you choose which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring Settings – WP 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 layout and design of your site, many themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons and enabling the function …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online, you need to ensure that your site is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?)
To learn more about how to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website or blog, refer to this article:
WordPress Categories & Tags
WordPress post tags & post categories help search engines classify and index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your pages.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s categories and tags should be set up during the Website Planning Stage.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories that have been set up.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover your web content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although search engines like Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Your 404 Error Page
When online users enter the wrong URL or click on a dead link, they will typically be greeted with an error – page not found message …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can be configured into a useful source of traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is post fresh content on a regular basis to drive more web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and expertise required to perform this process typically takes some web 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 section of the series.
This is the end of Section Three
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive tutorial series aimed at helping site owners learn how to grow their business with a WordPress website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
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