Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your website into an automated web traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to generate more web traffic is publish great content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to bring traffic automatically as you begin to add content on your website.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business getting increasingly more competitive worldwide, it’s worth exploring every advantage available to improve your performance online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage over other competitors. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to understand the key difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is more work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All is humming along in the widget factory when suddenly, all equipment stops.
No one can figure out what is wrong and so the plant manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert heads out directly to the control box. After staring at the wiring board for no more than 2 minutes, the expert then produces a teensy-weensy hammer and makes a very gentle tap near the right corner of the box.
Immediately, the machinery springs back to life.
The manager is greatly overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request of payment for services for $5,000.
Confused and outraged, the manager dials the expert. Why had they had been charged so much for so little time delivering such a minimal amount of work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive web traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress web site set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social followers from sites like Facebook and LinkedIn and dozens of other web properties would be immediately 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 site?)
While the solution to many challenges can seem quite simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than simply installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party accounts need to be set up and activated to get specific results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to ensure that everything will function as planned, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. It’s not as easy as installing a solution, clicking a button, or configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration phase is a process that involves your server, your website, and various external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simplified flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these areas.
Configuring Your Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is fine-tuning 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 welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic you may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like configuring spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step is to configure various third-party sites.
External Sites
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all of your content is published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it then gets distributed automatically to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external sites have been added to your system, content linked back to your site will be automatically fed to these platforms. Your content and business will receive exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites and online solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings to save time 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 before configuring your WordPress site:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with essential data, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your account and site data with Google have been set up, this information can be used with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data have been set up, traffic tracking information can be integrated with WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account is set up, this information can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers users the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated traffic generation system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your 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 attract new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have pages set up with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online platforms and RSS 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 blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
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 social feed.
There are various technologies and third-party applications you can add to your own web traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
Configuring Your WordPress Site
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
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 Section)
As stated in 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, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section displays only one entry …
(Writing Settings – Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 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 of displaying the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website 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 your traffic system is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly ping all the update services you have specified in the Update Services area whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Section)
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 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks enable WordPress to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings Section)
Here are some of the ways your post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
We have created a detailed tutorial on using permalinks in WordPress here: Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality 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 visitors to your site
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with 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 ignore the importance of securing your website or blog.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to botnets and hackers.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages easy for search engines like Google to find, classify and index …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugins For SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find, crawl and index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with others can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your site with WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing features to your website easily with free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social share plugins allow you to select which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress Traffic Features In 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, some themes also include options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a few buttons to enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Additional Features Of WordPress To Configure For Improved Traffic Flow
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website remains compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article on adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
WordPress Post Tags & Post Categories
Tags and categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your website.
(WordPress categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your website.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites discover more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. HTML site maps are web pages that link to all other content on your site and provide users with a visual map of how your content is organized, whereas XML sitemaps are code that only search engines can read. Although Google will index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When visitors searching online for your website enter the wrong web address or click on a dead link, they will normally be greeted with a 404 page …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 Error Page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your web server, there are several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do is post fresh content on a consistent basis to automatically start generating web traffic.
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 System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some web developers a long time 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 WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part 3
To keep reading about this topic, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive tutorial series designed to help small business owners learn how to grow their business online using a WordPress-powered website and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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