Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new traffic automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is add great content consistently to generate web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of this process. We explained 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 website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section, we will discuss the configuration phase of this process. The focus of this section is to help you understand why an expertly configured WordPress site is different from a professionally configured website. You will also discover what kind of work needs to be done to ensure that when all is fully configured, you can automatically bring visitors as you begin to add content on a regular basis on your website.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive and are researching every advantage they can to improve their results online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage over other competitors. With an expertly configured website, you have a significant advantage from the very beginning.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here is a simple way to describe 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 web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
A Semi-True Story …
All was going fine in the gizmo-making factory when everything ground to a sudden halt.
As no one could figure out what went wrong, the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert headed out directly to the main control box. After staring at the board for 5 minutes, the expert then took out a tiny hammer and made a gentle tap near the right-hand side of the control unit.
Immediately, the machinery began to work once again.
The plant manager was grateful and relieved as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received an invoice for $5,000.
The factory manager rang back the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrived 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 drive new traffic consistently to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor was able to fix it? 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 your website or blog set up and configured so all you have to do is publish new content and search engines, social networks and dozens of other web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
Although many experts often make complicated solutions look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than just installing a website and configuring settings for the client. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which programs need to be installed to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve specific results
- Which options need to be configured to ensure that everything functions as planned, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved. It’s not as easy as installing and configuring one or two plugins, clicking on a button or two, or configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration stage is a process that involves your web hosting server, your WP site, and a number of external sites or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we create a simplified flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your web server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your site can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like implementing spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites.
External Accounts
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all of your content should be posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will radiate outwards to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
After incorporating these external platforms into your system, content linked back to your website gets automatically added to these platforms. Your content and site will be exposed to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some of these third-party sites and online services will need to have accounts 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, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up before configuring your site’s settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with important data, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account and site details with Google are set up, you can use this information with web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic results, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, traffic monitoring code can be added to all of your pages in WordPress using a simple Google Analytics plugin used with other applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account with Bing Webmaster Tools, use this information to automate web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners a self-hosted and a 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 features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. 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 4 of this article series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media accounts set up before you can integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and bring new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick those that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your social feed.
There are many different sites and platforms you can add to your web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring WordPress Settings
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated 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, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, this section lists only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 Settings
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 traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to view the rest of the content from summaries, 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 main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly ping your list of update services whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
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 articles, 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 Section)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow your site to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks, go here: Setting Up Your WordPress Permalinks
Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to bring more visitors to your site
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the 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 web security.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to bots and hackers.
More info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(WordPress Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your website’s SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to index, it also lets you specify how to present your content in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your site using free or inexpensive plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social plugins let you select which 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 followers), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring Settings – Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Other Important Features To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, 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 when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online (or plan to), you need to ensure that your site stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Categories & Tags
WordPress post tags & post categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which helps you get more traffic.
(WordPress categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s post tags and categories during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags you have set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications discover more of 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 thing. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, whereas an XML sitemap contains code that only search engines can read. Although Google can index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – Don’t Forget This!
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong URL or click on an invalid link, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(A 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do is publish web content consistently to generate web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many web professionals a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is explained in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business online cost-effectively using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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"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
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