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 1 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 generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is add great content on a regular basis to automatically begin attracting new traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured to drive visitors automatically as you begin to add content to your web site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale and are looking for every opportunity they can to increase their competitiveness online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. An expertly configured website gives your business an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to describe the key difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
A Semi-True Story …
Things were going according to schedule in the widget-making factory when suddenly, everything came to a halt.
As no one could figure out what happened, the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
The expert arrived shortly after being summoned and, without saying a word, immediately headed towards the main control box. After staring at the wiring diagrams for 5 minutes or less, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny hammer and made a very gentle tap about one cm from the top-left side of the control unit.
Immediately, every machine came back to life.
The floor manager was relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager received a bill for $5,000.
The factory manager called 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 then 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 main challenge most businesses face online is driving traffic to their sites.
How much money did the plant stand to lose when production stopped working and no one in the business had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for spending years building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and avert a crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your website set up so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
While the solution to many problems often seems ridiculously easy once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts need to be set up and activated to achieve specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to ensure that things will work as you have imagined, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. It’s not as simple as installing a solution, clicking on a button or two, or tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration stage involves the integration of various different parts such as your server, your website or blog, and a number of external sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the configuration phase)
Let’s take a brief look at these steps.
Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about tweaking settings in your web hosting account that affect how your website will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web server 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 website can attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like configuring spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites and services.
External Services
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all of your content will get published from one central location (your site) and from there, it will be distributed automatically to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external services into your setup, content linking back to your website will get automatically published on search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and site will be exposed to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some sites and online services will need to be 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, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site details, this information can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your account and site data, you can add visitor tracking information to WordPress using a Google Analytics plugin and feed data instantly to other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account is with Bing are set up, this information can be used with traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers a hosted and a self-hosted option. 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 explain how to integrate this into your automated traffic generation system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need your social accounts set up before you can 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 and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have pages set up with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to loads of social sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will review some of these tools in more detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to loads of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse account.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications you can incorporate into your traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
Configuring Your WordPress Site
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.
Configuring WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(WordPress 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 intentionally configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the 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 – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section …
(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 your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears 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 blog to view 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 your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to automatically notify various update services when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
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 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings enable your site to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your post permalinks …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, refer to this tutorial: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
Configuring Settings – WP Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help improve traffic generation
Blog Defender 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 immune from being attacked by hackers.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and botnets.
More info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages easy for search engines like Google to find and index …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with members of their own online communities can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if your site provides great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using free or inexpensive plugins)
There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social share plugins allow you to select which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring Settings – WP 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 design and layout aspects of your website, many themes also include built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to configure your settings and enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
Additional Configuration Areas For WordPress Traffic
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do business online, you need to make sure that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
We have written a detailed article on adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
Post Categories & Tags
Post categories and post tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.
(WordPress post categories help to improve your site’s SEO, which improves traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s categories and tags should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits.
Add A Site Map
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications find your site’s content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – A Source Of Lost Traffic Opportunities!
When visitors enter the wrong URL into their browser or click on a link pointing to a destination on your site that no longer exists, they are greeted with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your web server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
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 add web content on a regular basis to generate web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform the configuration process can take many web professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping website owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively using a WordPress-powered website and proven web marketing methods.
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