Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to begin attracting new web traffic is add new content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. 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 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 discuss the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured to get new traffic automatically when you begin posting content on your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business getting so much more competitive worldwide, it’s worth exploring any and every advantage available to improve your own performance online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over the competition. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website allows their business to get off with a flying start from the moment their website is launched.
The Configuration Stage Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to describe the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence and an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this here is a little story.
Knowing Where To Tap
All was going according to schedule in the widget assembly line when everything suddenly stopped.
As no one could figure out what happened, the manager decided to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert headed immediately towards the control box. After staring at the circuit board for 2 minutes or so, the expert then produced a tiny little hammer from his tool belt and made a very gentle tap near the top-right side of the unit.
Immediately, the whole workshop lit up and sprang back to life.
The floor manager was relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received an invoice for the amount of $5,000.
The factory manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged so much for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive new visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped functioning and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to get paid fairly for having spent years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your web site set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social media and dozens of other online properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
While many experts often make difficult solutions look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than just installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which services you need to set up and activate to achieve certain outcomes
- Which options you need to configure to ensure that processes will run as envisioned, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. It’s not as simple as installing and configuring a plugin, clicking a couple of buttons, or tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration stage is a process that involves your server, your WordPress site, and a number of external sites or online services …
(The configuration stage 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 something like this …
(A simplified diagram of the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Configuring Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about tweaking settings in your server that affect how your website will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, 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 your site may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like configuring spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess and error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step is to set up and configure various external sites or online solutions.
External Accounts
The basic idea of setting up external sites is that all content gets posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it then gets automatically distributed to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After adding these external sites to your configuration, content pointing back to your website will get automatically fed to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social sites, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your site will be given exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings to speed up the configuration 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 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 information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your Google Webmasters account and site details have been set up, this information can be used to automate traffic 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 performance, SEO, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up your Google Analytics account, you can add tracking information to WordPress using a simple Google Analytics plugin and feed data automatically to other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account and entering site data with Bing Webmaster Tools, use your details with 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 both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan 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 with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your various social accounts in order to integrate these with 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 visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick those that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we will look at some of these tools in greater detail in the Automation phase).
(There are many social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
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 account.
There are various sites and platforms you can add to your own web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and often overlooked traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As described below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, 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 available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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
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 influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers 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 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 checkbox is enabled or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to notify various update services when 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 unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion Settings
Although this section is 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings enable WordPress to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s post permalinks …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
To learn more about setting up WP permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Plugins – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No web 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 WordPress site invisible to attacks from hackers and botnets.
For more information, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social features to your site easily using free or inexpensive plugins)
There are many free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social plugins let you select which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring Settings – Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, many themes also give you built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, easily add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure settings for better traffic results)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure For Improved Traffic
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do business online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your site stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Categories & Post Tags
Categories and tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(WordPress categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s post tags and post categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories that have been set up.
Visitor Site Map
A visitor site map that displays all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications find your web content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, while an XML sitemap is code that only search engine bots can read. Although Google will 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 can result in increased traffic.
Your WordPress 404 Page
When visitors searching online for your site type in the wrong web address or click on a link pointing to a destination on your website that no longer exists, they will typically be presented with a 404 error page …
(A 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up in your server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do is add web content on a regular basis to start generating new traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform this process typically takes some web professionals months 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 covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 3
To keep reading, click here:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping website owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively using a WordPress-driven website and proven web marketing strategies.
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