Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your website using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically begin attracting new traffic is add great content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of the blueprint. We helped you understand the best way to start 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 site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration phase of the traffic system. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured in order to automatically begin bringing new visitors when you start to publish content to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive and are looking for any and every advantage available to improve their performance online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous competitive advantage. For business owners, having an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
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 set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s one way to describe the key difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only is more labor required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let me illustrate this with a story.
A Semi-True Story …
All is humming along in the widget-making factory when the machines suddenly stops.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the manager decides to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert immediately goes to the main control box. After staring silently at the box for what seems like 3 minutes or so, the expert then produces a teeny-weeny little hammer and makes a single tap about 2 cm from the right-hand side of the control unit.
Immediately, all the machinery in the workshop returns to normal.
The floor manager is relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager receives an invoice for $5,000.
Feeling furious, the manager calls the expert. Why were they charged so much for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives in the manager’s intray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving traffic to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP blog configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating online 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 attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although experts often make complicated solutions look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to work things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which third-party accounts you need to set up to get specific results
- Which settings you need to configure to make sure everything works the way you expect, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring a piece of software, clicking a button … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of various different parts such as your server, your WP site, and various external sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we create a simple flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about configuring settings and options in your web-hosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, 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 traffic your website may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwanted traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like configuring server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step is to configure a number of external sites and online solutions.
External Services
The purpose of adding external sites is that all content should be posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will automatically be syndicated to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After adding these external services to your traffic system, content linking back to your site is automatically added to these platforms. Your content will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some external sites and solutions will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to help speed up the process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with essential information, tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account with Google Webmasters, your account details can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic results, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrers, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up your Google Analytics account, traffic tracking information can be added to all of your pages in WordPress via plugins used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account and site details with Bing have been set up, you can use this information to automate web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers users the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your automated web traffic system in Part Four of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and drive 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 pages and attract new visitors to your site.
You should set up accounts and profile pages with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social sites you can You can syndicate your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick those that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools (we will review some of these tools in more detail further below and during the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
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 website.
There are many different solutions that can be incorporated into your web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Global Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and often overlooked traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated below 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, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, only one service is listed …
(Update Services)
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
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 have an influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your site 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.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to automatically notify all the update services you have listed whenever 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Section)
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 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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings enable WordPress to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks, refer to this tutorial: Setting Up WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add just about 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
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is immune from a cyberattack.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to attacks from hackers and botnets.
For more details, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your site’s search engine optimization. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your site with free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website with free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to choose which 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 likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features
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 layout and design of your website, some themes also include built-in options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for improved traffic results)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as clicking a few buttons to enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the things 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 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 damage your business as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online (or are planning to), it’s important that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
Post Categories And Tags
Post categories & post tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.
(WordPress categories help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which improves traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s tags and categories should be reviewed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
When configuring your site to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been correctly set up to deliver optimal results.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find your web 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 thing. 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 engines can interpret. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors searching for your website type in the wrong URL into their browser or click on a hyperlink pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they are greeted with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 Not Found error page) …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your site fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do is publish content on a consistent basis to automatically drive more traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some web developers months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is covered in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series designed to help small business owners learn how to grow their business online using a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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