Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is add fresh content on a regular basis to drive more web traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on 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 site, and what to do if your existing site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. We will explain what makes an expertly configured site different, and how much work is required to ensure that when all is fully set up and configured, you can automatically begin driving web traffic simply by adding new content on a consistent basis on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as their greatest challenge online. With competition becoming progressively tougher businesses are exploring any opportunity they can to increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge advantage over other competitors. For business owners, having an expertly configured website means having a significant competitive advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer you.
Here’s one way to understand the key difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here is an amusing story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Everything was going well in the widget-making assembly line when all of a sudden, things ground to a halt.
No one could figure out what is wrong and so the manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert headed immediately towards the control box. After staring at the wiring diagrams for 5 minutes, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny hammer and made a gentle tap about two inches from the right corner of the box.
Immediately, the whole workshop lit up and came back to life.
The plant 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 an invoice for $5,000.
The manager rang back the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay so much for so little time delivering a minimal amount of work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive new traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to be compensated fairly for years spent building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your website configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social sites and dozens of other 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?)
Although many experts often make difficult situations and problems look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to work things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than simply installing a website and configuring some of the site settings for clients. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to achieve desired outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured in order to ensure that things function as envisioned, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and time-consuming. This is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a solution, clicking a button … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration stage is a complex process that involves your web server, your WordPress site, and various external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we were to create a simplified flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram of the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server 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 site will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like integrating spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites.
External Sites
The basic idea of adding external sites is that all of your content gets published to a central location (your site) and from there, it then gets automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external services into your network, content pointing back to your website will get automatically posted to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and website will be given exposure to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some external sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site’s settings 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 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 you with a range of important information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
Once your Google Webmasters account and site details have been set up, your details can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
After setting up your account and site data, you can add traffic monitoring code to WordPress using a simple plugin and feed data automatically to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account and entering site details with Bing, this information can be used with traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers users a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which various 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 automated web traffic system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media Sites
(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 media accounts set up 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 pages and attract new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can You can post your content to loads of social sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can post your content to loads of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add a feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse website.
There are many different platforms you can add to your traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
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 key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(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 have purposely configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section and WordPress will do the rest …
(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
***
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 visitors 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 appears in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to get the rest of the content from summaries, 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 check box is enabled or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to automatically notify all the update services you have specified in the Update Services section whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
Although this section is 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks enable WordPress to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways your permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up WP permalinks, see this tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress – Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your site, 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
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website is completely immune from a cyberattack.
(WordPress 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.
For more details, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO Plugin)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your site’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to find, crawl and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing features to your website easily using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can add social sharing to your site easily using WordPress plugins.
Most social share plugins allow you to specify 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 followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring Settings – WP Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, many themes also provide options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a free theme) allow you to configure settings and options for better traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
Additional Configuration Features For WordPress Traffic
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you do any type of business online, you need to make sure that your site is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
We have written a detailed article on how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website here:
Post Tags & Post Categories
Post tags and categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(Post categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s post categories and tags should be set up during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories you have set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications discover more of your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Forget This!
When visitors searching online for your website enter the wrong URL into their browser or click on an invalid link, they will typically be greeted with an error – page not found message …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 Error Page can redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up on your web server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then is post web content on a consistent basis to drive web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some web professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
- Web Site Traffic Blueprint Part 4 – How To Attract More Web Traffic For Your Business With WordPress
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping website owners learn how to grow their business online with a WordPress-powered website and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
Subscribe To Our Site And Get Notified Of New WordPress Tutorials!
***
"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
***