Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this 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 website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically start attracting web traffic is post new content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to ensure that new web traffic will automatically start flowing simply by consistently posting content to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With competition becoming progressively tougher businesses are researching any and every advantage they can that can help you get better results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage over the competition. For business owners, having an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the very start.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s one way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence and 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 are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Allow me to illustrate this with a joke.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Things were going fine in the widget plant when everything came to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert immediately went towards the control box. After staring silently at the wiring board for 3 minutes or less, the expert then took out a teensy-weensy hammer from his utility belt and made a very gentle tap about 2 inches from the left corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything came back to life.
The manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager received an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
The factory manager picked up the phone and dialled the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a ridiculously high fee for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to fix a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a site set up and configured so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other online properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
While the solution to many problems often seems ridiculously simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring some basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install to add various functionalities to your site.
- Which third-party accounts need to be set up to get desired results
- Which settings need to be configured to make sure things function to plan, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite involved. It’s not just about installing a solution, configuring some settings in your admin area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration phase is a complex process that involves your web server, your site, and various third-party sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If all the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your website can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like implementing spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
Once your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites or online services.
External Accounts
The concept behind choosing external sites is that all of your content should be posted to a central location (your site) and from there, radiate outwards to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external services have been added to your configuration, content pointing back to your website gets automatically fed to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and business benefits from exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some web properties and online platforms will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site’s 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 Search Console)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with essential data, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account with Google Webmasters have been set up, use the account information with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up Google Analytics, traffic monitoring information can be integrated with WordPress using a plugin used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account, this information can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, 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 web traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your various social accounts before you can configure these as part of 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 get new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts and pages set up with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose the ones that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we cover some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging web platforms and content aggregators that can serve as second-tier traffic generation sources. 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 site that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your social feed.
There are many different solutions you can add to your traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section displays only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress will do the rest …
(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 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, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your site 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 main setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to ping all the update services you have listed when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although the settings in this section 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 posts, 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 Screen)
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 permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial on using permalinks here: How To Set Up Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is guaranteed immunity from being attacked by hackers.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
More information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(WP Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are loads of social sharing plugins available for WordPress users.
Most social sharing plugins let you select which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which users can unlock by liking your page.
Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also include built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Additional Features Of WordPress To Configure
Last but not least in the web traffic 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 site for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do business online, it’s important that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
To learn more about the importance of having a compliant website, refer to this article:
WordPress Tags And Categories
Tags and post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(WordPress categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s post tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
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 pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover more of your online 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. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, while an XML sitemap is mostly code that only search engine bots can understand. Although Google will index your site just using 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 results in increased traffic.
404 Page – An Additional Source Of Traffic!
When online users type in the wrong web address or click on a link pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they will normally be presented with an error – page not found message …
(A 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do to automatically generate more traffic is add great content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform the configuration process can take some website developers a long time to learn.
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 explained in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of an article series designed to help business owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively with a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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