Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS.
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 generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is post web content on a consistent basis to automatically start generating new traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase of this process. 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 website, and what to do if your existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we look at the configuration phase of this process. We explain how to configure a WordPress site to ensure that web traffic will automatically start flowing when you start to add new content on your website.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Also, the business landscape is becoming so much more competitive on a global scale and businesses are exploring any advantage available to improve their performance online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over the competition. An expertly configured website gives your business an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Process
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 difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a story.
A Semi-True Story …
Everything is going just fine in the widget-making manufacturing plant when suddenly, things grinds to a stop.
As no one can figure out what went wrong, the manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately walks to the main control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for less than 2 minutes or so, the expert then produces a tiny hammer from his pocket and makes a very gentle tap about three cm from the left corner of the box.
Immediately, everything starts working once more.
The manager is greatly relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives an invoice for $5,000.
Bewildered and bordering on a sense of outrage, the factory manager calls the expert. Demanding to know why the expert has charged them such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the business had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for investing years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WP web site fully configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social media and dozens of other web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
Although the solution to many problems is often quite easy once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to figure things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than simply installing a website and configuring site settings for a client. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to achieve certain outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured in order to ensure that things will work how you have planned, etc.
(Driving 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 and time-consuming. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing a piece of software, clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of many parts including your web hosting server, your website or blog, and various third-party sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we create a simple diagram showing the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your server that affect how you will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your business can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like configuring server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites and services.
External Sites
The basic concept of setting up external sites is that all of your content should be posted to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, get distributed automatically to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external platforms into your traffic network, content linking back to your site will be automatically added to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and business will then receive exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some external sites will need to be set up before configuring your settings to 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 Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important data, tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account with Google, use this information to automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your up your Google Analytics account and entered your site data, you can add visitor tracking code to WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and send data automatically to many other useful applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account and entering site data, the account details can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your automated traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media accounts before you can integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring 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 set up profiles with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can You can post your content to many social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse website.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications you can add to your own web traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure WordPress.
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 key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, 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 website owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Screen)
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 prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services text box
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 – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section and WordPress takes care of the rest …
(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 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 text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to view the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to automatically notify your update services list when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks Screen)
Here are some of the ways your site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about setting up WP permalinks, go here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your site is something you cannot afford to ignore.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
For more information, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s ability to rank better in search engines)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your website’s search engine optimization. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to find and index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with others online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social features to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social share plugins let you select which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which users can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings
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 design and layout aspects of your site, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes can be configured for better traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic – Additional Configuration Steps
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your site is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
We have created a detailed article about adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
WordPress Tags And Categories
WordPress tags & categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(Categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s categories and tags should be reviewed and set up during the Website Planning Phases.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories you have set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external sites find more of your website content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin 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 Error Page – Don’t Forget This!
When visitors type in the wrong web address or click on a hyperlink pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they will normally be presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect 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 several plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your site fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then is add content consistently to generate traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform this process typically takes some web professionals months to acquire.
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 addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click on the link below:
This article is part of an article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively and drive traffic organically using a WordPress website or blog and proven web marketing strategies.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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