Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new traffic automatically to your site using WordPress.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to begin attracting traffic is post content consistently!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase of this process. 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 site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we discuss the configuration stage of this process. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured in order to drive web traffic automatically as you begin to add content consistently to your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business getting so much more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth looking into any and every advantage available to increase your own competitiveness online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge advantage. With an expertly configured WordPress site, your business has a flying start as soon as your site is launched.
The Configuration Phase Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to describe the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and a built-in 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, but also a special type of expertise.
Allow me to illustrate this point with a joke.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
All is running smoothly in the widget-making factory when things grind to a sudden halt.
As no one can figure out what is wrong, the floor manager decides to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert heads out directly to the main control box. After staring silently at the board for no more than 2 minutes, the expert then takes out a teensy-weensy little hammer and makes a single tap near the right corner of the unit.
Immediately, all the machinery springs back to life.
The plant manager is grateful and relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager receives a request of payment for services totalling $5,000.
Angry to the point of feeling outrage, the factory manager calls the expert. Why did he charge them such a ludicrous fee for less than five minutes work? He then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for having invested years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress web site set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating web 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 website?)
Although experts often make complex things look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to get certain results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to ensure that things will work the way you would like, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved. This is because it’s not as simple as installing a plugin, configuring some settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of many different components such as your web server, your website, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these areas.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is tweaking settings and options in your web hosting account specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, 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 traffic you can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and/or online services.
Integration With External Sites
The purpose of adding external sites is that all of your content should be published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, be automatically distributed to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After adding these external platforms to your traffic system, content pointing back to your website will be automatically syndicated to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and site will be exposed to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some external sites and online solutions will need to be set up before configuring your settings to 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 Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with important data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site details, the information can be used with traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your up your Google Analytics account and entered your site data, traffic tracking data can be integrated with WordPress via a simple Google Analytics plugin and automatically fed to other useful 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 account and site data with Bing Webmaster Tools have been set up, use this information to automate traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, 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 traffic generation system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your social media accounts before you can 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 bring new visitors to your site.
You should set up accounts and profiles with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are many 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 discuss some of these tools in greater detail in the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add a feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your account.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your web traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress dashboard area includes 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 affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(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 chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services field
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section contains only one entry …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
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 …
(You can 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 your content gets seen by readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to read 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 your traffic system is concerned, however, the most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to ping all the update services you have listed when 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 …
(Global Settings – 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways your SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up WordPress permalinks, go here: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add just about every type 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 traffic to your site
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No blog is immune from being targeted.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to attacks from hackers and botnets.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web content easy for search engines like Google to find, classify and index …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO Plugin)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website 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 Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins available for WordPress.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to specify which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Configuring Other WordPress Sections For Improved Traffic
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
Categories & Post Tags
WordPress categories & tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your web pages.
(WordPress post categories help search engines better organize and index your pages, which improves traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s post categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the tags and categories you have set up.
Visitor Site Map
A visitor site map that displays all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find your online 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 different things. Although Google will index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin 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 – Don’t Forget To Configure It!
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong URL into their browser or click on a link pointing to a destination on your site that no longer exists, they are greeted with an error page (known as a 404 Not Found page) …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 Error Page can redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is publish fresh content consistently to automatically start generating more web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different elements and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform this process typically takes many web developers 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 addressed in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation System 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 series of articles aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively using a WordPress website and proven online marketing strategies.
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