Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your website using WordPress.
In Part One of this article series, we described 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 blog, all you have to do is add new content consistently to bring more traffic!)
In Part Two, 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 site, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will look at the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. We will show you what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different. You will also learn what kind of work is required to make sure that when everything is fully configured, you will drive new visitors automatically just by adding new content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive and businesses are exploring any opportunity they can to improve their performance and results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over the competition. An expertly configured website gives you a flying start from the moment your site is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Stage
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 take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s a simple way to describe the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this point here’s a story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Everything was going just fine in the gizmo-making assembly line when suddenly, things ground to a halt.
No one could figure out what has gone wrong and so the manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrived and walked directly to the main control box. After staring silently at the schematics for about 5 minutes, the expert then took out a tiny little hammer from his tool box and made a single tap about 1 cm from the bottom-right side of the control unit.
Immediately, all the machinery inside the factory floor sprang to life.
The plant manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received an invoice for the amount of $5,000.
The factory manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they were charged such a ludicrous fee for less than 5 minutes work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived and was placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 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 equipment stopped functioning and no one on the business was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to ask to be compensated fairly for having spent years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress site configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest 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 driving traffic to your website?)
While many experts often make complicated solutions look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to figure things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to add specific functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve certain outcomes
- Which options need to be configured in order to ensure that processes will run to plan, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved. It’s not as easy as installing and configuring a plugin, clicking a button, or tweaking some settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration stage is a complex process that involves your web server, your website or blog, and various third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simple diagram of the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for site installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your web-hosting account that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, 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 web traffic your business may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like integrating server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites.
Integration With External Accounts
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all of your content will be published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will syndicate automatically to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external platforms have been added to your network, content linked back to your site is automatically added to search, social and aggregator sites. Your website will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of these sites and online platforms will need to be set up before configuring your 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 Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with useful data, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your Google Search Console account and site data are set up, this information can be used with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, marketing activities, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, you can add tracking information to all of your pages in WordPress using a simple plugin and send data automatically to various other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account and site data with Bing have been set up, you can use this information with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your automated traffic generation system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media and social bookmarking accounts set up 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 pages and drive new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and pages set up with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to many social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
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 social feed.
There are many different sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your own web traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, your WordPress admin area includes a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – 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 purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services field
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically …
(WordPress lets you 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 visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to get 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 here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to automatically notify all the update services you have listed in the Update Services box when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although discussion settings are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalinks
Permalinks enable your site to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Plugin Settings – Configuration
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot ignore the importance of securing your web site.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and botnets.
Go here for more details:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s ability to rank better in search engines)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines to find, classify and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with their social networks can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their website with WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing features to your website with WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins let you select which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WP Traffic Features In Themes
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 layout and design of your site, some themes also include built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other WordPress Areas
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?)
For a detailed article about why it’s important to have a compliant website, go here:
WordPress Post Categories And Tags
Post categories and tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your website.
(Post categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and categories should be reviewed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits and results.
Add A Site Map
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find your web content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Only search engines can understand an XML sitemap. Although Google will index your site just using an XML sitemap (which plugins 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 – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When online visitors type in the wrong web address into their browser or click on a dead link, they will normally be presented with a 404 page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found 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 in your server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do is publish great content regularly to automatically begin bringing new web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and external web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This article is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic automatically with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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