Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new traffic automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add great content on a regular basis to automatically drive traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of the blueprint. We helped you understand the best way to get started 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 site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will look at the configuration stage of this process. We will show you how to configure a WordPress site to automatically drive traffic when you start publishing web content on your site.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as their greatest challenge online. Businesses are becoming so much more competitive worldwide and are looking for every advantage available to get better results online.
The ability to generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage over other competitors. An expertly configured WordPress site gives your business a flying start and an immediate advantage online.
The Configuration Process Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here is a simple way to understand the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only is additional work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here is a story.
A Semi-True Story …
All was going well in the widget workshop when all of a sudden, production stopped.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert walked immediately to the main control box. After staring at the board for no more than 5 minutes or so, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny hammer from his tool box and made a very gentle tap about one cm from the right corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything began to work once again.
The plant manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received a request of payment for services rendered totalling $5,000.
The factory manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay so much for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving visitors to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to be compensated fairly for investing years building up the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WP site configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other web properties would be immediately 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 site?)
Although many experts often make complex situations and problems look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring a few settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which third-party accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve specific results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to make sure everything functions to plan, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not so technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and time-consuming. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring one or two plugins, tweaking some settings in your admin area or clicking a button … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web hosting server, your website or blog, and various third-party sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings in your web server that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your business may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like configuring server-level spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites and services.
External Accounts
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all content will get posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it will syndicate automatically to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external sites into your network, content pointing back to your site gets automatically published on these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and site will receive exposure online, helping your business tap into a whole new audience and source of traffic.
Some of the third-party sites and online services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your 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 before configuring your WordPress site:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful information, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site details, use the details with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up your Google Analytics account, visitor tracking information can be easily integrated with WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account and site data are set up, use this information to integrate and automate traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers users the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your traffic generation system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(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.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site.
Set up accounts and profiles with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick those that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we will cover some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging web platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse page.
There are various sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your own traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Global 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 have specifically chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section contains only one entry …
(WordPress Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section …
(You can 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 on this page can have an influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to read the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to instantly ping all the update services you have listed when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings Section)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s permalinks …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: Setting Up Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring Settings – Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add just about every type 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
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with 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, securing your web sites is something you cannot ignore.
(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 bot and hacker attacks.
More info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving the way search engines find and index your web pages …
(SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your website’s SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find, classify and index, it also lets you 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 online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing features to your site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to choose which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring Settings – WordPress Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also include built-in options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure For Better Traffic Results
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as 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 website complies with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
We have written a detailed article on adding legal pages to WordPress here:
WordPress Categories And Tags
WordPress tags and post categories help search engines better classify and index your web pages, which helps you get more traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and categories should be set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
When configuring your site to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags you have set up.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web 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, whereas an XML sitemap is code that only search engines can read. Although search engines like Google will index your site just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Your WordPress 404 Page
When visitors type in the wrong URL into their web browser or click on an invalid hyperlink, they will normally be presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
A 404 Error Page can redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your web server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is add fresh content consistently to automatically begin attracting new traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some web professionals months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials designed to help you learn how to grow your business online and drive traffic organically using a WordPress-driven website and proven online marketing strategies.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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