Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your site 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 website or blog, all you have to do is post content on a regular basis to automatically begin attracting traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on 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 existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section, we will look at the configuration stage of the traffic system. We explain how to configure a WordPress site so you can automatically start to get visitors whenever you post web content to your website.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With competition becoming progressively tougher businesses are looking for any advantage available to increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to explain the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let me illustrate this with a little story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Things were going well in the gizmo assembly factory when everything came to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived soon afterwards and headed out immediately to the control box. After staring at the electronic components for 5 minutes, the expert then produced a little hammer and made a gentle tap about 3 cm from the right-hand side of the box.
Immediately, the machinery returned to normal.
The floor manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received a request of payment for services totalling $5,000.
The factory manager picked up the phone and rang the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them so much for less than 5 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 number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for spending years developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly fix a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your website or blog set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other online properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
Although the solution to many challenges can seem quite simple once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to figure things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring a few settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which services you need to set up and activate to achieve specific results
- Which settings you need to configure in order to make sure things work to plan, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a piece of software, clicking on a button or two, or tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your server, your web site, and various external sites or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simplified flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these steps.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is tweaking settings and options in your hosting account specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, 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 will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites and online services.
External Web Properties And Accounts – Configuration
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all content will be posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will radiate outwards automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external sites into your traffic system, content linking back to your site gets automatically fed to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your site receives exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of the web properties and online platforms will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site’s settings to speed up the configuration 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 Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly site)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with essential data, tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site data, this information can be used to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, you can add traffic monitoring information to WordPress via a plugin and feed data automatically to other useful applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your account with Bing, this information can be used to automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking 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 accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and pages set up with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up accounts with and syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick those that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we will cover some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(There are many social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your page.
There are many different platforms you can incorporate into your traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
Configuring WordPress
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.
WordPress – Global Settings
The WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains an important and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As stated in 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 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 field
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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
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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 visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your site 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.
The most important setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Typically, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to instantly ping your update services list whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion Settings
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 Section)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your permalink URLs …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is guaranteed immunity from cyber attacks.
(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 attacks from hackers and botnets.
More information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages more indexable …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find, classify and index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with members of their online communities can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing to your site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins available for WordPress.
Most social plugins allow you to specify which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your pages which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your content is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons and enabling the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic System Configuration – Additional Sections
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
Post Tags And Post Categories
Tags and post categories help search engines better classify and index your web pages, which improves traffic.
(WordPress categories help search engines index your pages, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s post tags and post categories during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools find more of your online content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Only search engines can read XML sitemaps. Although Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – Another Source Of Traffic!
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong URL into their browser or click on a dead link, they will normally be greeted with a 404 error page …
(A 404 Page)
A 404 Not Found error page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up on your server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your site fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do is post content on a consistent basis to start generating web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration process can take 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 addressed in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section Three
To continue reading, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an article series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business using a WordPress website or blog and proven web marketing methods.
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