Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using WordPress.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to attract more web traffic is add web content regularly!)
In Part Two, we focused on critical setup decisions. 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 using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to automatically start to get new visitors simply by regularly publishing fresh content on your website.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive worldwide and are researching any advantage they believe will improve their performance online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over the competition. Having an expertly configured WordPress site gives your business a flying start and an immediate competitive advantage online.
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 a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s a simple way to explain the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence and an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is more labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing story.
A Semi-True Story …
All was moving along in the gizmo-making manufacturing plant when things ground to a sudden halt.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the manager decided to call in an expert.
Soon afterward, the expert arrived and immediately headed to the main control box. After staring at the control unit for 3 minutes, the expert then took out a teensy-weensy hammer and made a single tap about 1 cm from the bottom-right edge of the box.
Immediately, the assembly line started working once again.
The manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received a request of payment for services for the sum of $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged so much for less than 5 minutes work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for spending years developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a web site set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other 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 attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although experts often make difficult things look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to figure things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than installing a website and configuring a few basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party accounts need to be set up and activated to get certain results
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to ensure that things work to plan, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. It’s not just about installing and configuring a piece of software, configuring some options and settings in your admin area or clicking a button … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration stage is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your site, and various external sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we create a simplified diagram of the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the configuration phase)
Let’s take a brief look at what’s involved.
Configuring The Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about configuring settings in your web hosting account that affect how your website will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web 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 your business will attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
After fine-tuning your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to set up and configure various external sites.
External Services
The idea behind choosing external sites is that all content should be posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it will automatically be syndicated to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external platforms have been added to your traffic system, content linking back to your site will be automatically posted to these platforms. Your content and business will receive exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of these third-party sites will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress settings to help save time 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 Webmasters)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with important data, SEO tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account, use your information with traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic results, SEO, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data are set up, traffic tracking information can be integrated with WordPress using plugins used with other 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, you can use your information 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 both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan 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 at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your web traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts in order to 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 drive new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. 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 (we will review some of these tools in greater detail further below and during the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your page.
There are many different platforms that can be incorporated into your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global WordPress Settings
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress admin menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Screen)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely 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 text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section lists only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section …
(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 have an influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your 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.
The most important setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to notify the update services list when a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – 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 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)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
WordPress – Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is guaranteed immunity from a cyber attack.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and botnets.
Go here for more information:
- Prevent Malicious Attacks On Your WordPress Web Site From Hackers With Blog Defender Security Plugin
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your website’s SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find, crawl and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily 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 using WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins let you select which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring layout and design aspects of your website, many themes also include options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic System – Additional Configuration Steps
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you do any type of business online, you need to ensure that your site complies with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business online.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Legally Compliant?)
To learn more about how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website or blog, go here:
Categories & Tags
Post tags & categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your web pages.
(WordPress categories help search engines better classify and index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and post categories should be reviewed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stage.
When configuring your site to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories that have been set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that displays all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover more of your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although search engines like Google will index your pages 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.
Don’t Forget Your WordPress 404 Page Not Found
When online users enter the wrong URL into their web browser or click on an invalid link, they are presented with a 404 Not Found error page …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your web server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to automatically begin attracting new web traffic is publish new content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform the configuration process can take many web developers a long time to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as you can. This step is covered in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section 3
To keep reading about this topic, click here:
This article is part of an article series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online with a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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