Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is publish great content on a consistent basis to automatically attract web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic system. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to automatically start to get new visitors simply by adding web content to your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business becoming ever more competitive, it’s worth exploring every opportunity you can to get better results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous competitive advantage. An expertly configured website gives your business an immediate competitive advantage from the very beginning.
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 its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to explain the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is extra labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Everything was going just fine in the widget-making factory when all of a sudden, things ground to a halt.
As no one could figure out what went wrong, the manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert headed out immediately to the control box. After staring silently at the circuit board for 2 minutes, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny hammer and made a single tap about two inches from the top-right corner of the box.
Immediately, everything came back to life.
The floor manager was greatly overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The manager picked up the phone and called the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay so much for less than five minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the machines stopped working and no one in the business had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for having invested years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WP site configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
While the solution to many challenges is often ridiculously simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to get desired outcomes
- Which options you need to configure to ensure that things function to plan, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a plugin, clicking on a button or two, or configuring some settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of various different components such as your web hosting server, your website or blog, and various external sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your web hosting account that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic you can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up 404 error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites or online services.
Configuring External Web Properties
The concept behind adding external sites is that all of your content should be published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get syndicated automatically to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external services into your network, content linked back to your website will get automatically fed to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and business will be exposed to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some of the sites will need to be set up before configuring your site to help speed up the process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Search Console
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of essential information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your account with Google Search Console have been set up, you can use the information with 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 behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your account and site details, you can add visitor tracking code to WordPress via a simple plugin and feed data instantly to many other online applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And 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, this information can be used with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers users 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 web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your web traffic system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media accounts set up before you can configure these as part of 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 get new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick those that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(You can post your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add a feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
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 website.
There are various platforms you can incorporate into your traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described below the Update Services 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 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 all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section and WordPress takes care of the rest …
(You can 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
***
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 traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could affect 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 here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to instantly ping all the update services you have listed in the Update Services area whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
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 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using permalinks in WordPress here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring Settings – WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help your site generate more traffic
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is safe from being attacked by hackers.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to attacks from hackers and bots.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugins For SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your site’s SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with others online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website with WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website using WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins let you select which social 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 plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which users can unlock by sharing your page.
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, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, some themes also include built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure For Better Traffic Flow
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do any kind of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Tags & Post Categories
Post tags & categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(Categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s post tags and post categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find your site’s content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin 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 searching online for your website enter the wrong URL into their web browser or click on an invalid link, they are greeted with a 404 page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 Not Found page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover 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 allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do to automatically start generating more traffic is add great content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and expertise required to perform the configuration phase of the traffic automation process typically takes many website 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 covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online and drive traffic automatically with a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
Get Notified When New Tutorials Get Published – Subscribe To WPCompendium.org!
***
"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com
***