Welcome to Part Three of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article 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 web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically attract new web traffic is publish fresh content consistently!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We helped you understand the best way to get started 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 website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. You will learn why an expertly configured site is different, and how much work is required to make sure that when all is fully set up and configured, you can attract web traffic automatically when you begin to post fresh content to your web site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as their greatest challenge online. Also, the business landscape is becoming ever more competitive and businesses are exploring any and every advantage available to get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage. For businesses, having an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the very beginning.
The Configuration Process Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to explain the differences:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does it take extra labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expertise.
Let me illustrate this with an amusing little story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
All was running smoothly in the widget-making assembly line when things suddenly ground to a halt.
As no one could figure out what happened, the floor manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
The expert arrived shortly afterwards and, without uttering a word, headed immediately towards the control box. After staring silently at the board for 3 minutes, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy hammer from his tool belt and made a very gentle tap near the right corner of the unit.
Immediately, the machinery came back to life.
The plant manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager received a bill for $5,000.
The manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them so much for less than 5 minutes work and then 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 number one challenge most businesses face online is driving web traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to get paid fairly for investing years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your site set up so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although the solution to many challenges often seems ridiculously easy in hindsight, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to work things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few internal settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which third-party services you need to set up and activate to get desired results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to make sure things will function as envisioned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. This is because it’s not just about installing a solution, tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration phase is a process that involves your server, your website or blog, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these steps.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here 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 tweaking settings in your web server that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic your site will attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like configuring server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites.
External Accounts
The concept behind adding external sites is that all content will be published to a central location (your site) and from there, it will be distributed automatically to other parts of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external services to your configuration, content linking back to your website is automatically published on search, social and aggregator accounts. Your business will then be given additional exposure to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some external sites will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to 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 before configuring your WordPress site’s settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential information, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your account with Google Search Console, your information can be used with traffic-related settings in WordPress 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, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your up your account and site details has been entered, visitor tracking data can be easily integrated with WordPress using a plugin used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account has been with Bing are set up, use the information to automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, 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 web traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your social accounts 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 attract new traffic to your site.
Set up accounts and profile pages with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to many social sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select the ones that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(You can syndicate your content to lots of social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online platforms and content aggregators that can act as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, 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 an 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 sites and platforms you can incorporate into your own traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and often overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section includes only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – 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 will do the rest …
(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 traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog 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 main setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to instantly ping your update services list whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
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 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
Permalinks enable your site to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways your SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using WP permalinks here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more visitors to your site
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No site is completely safe from a cyber-attack.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
For more information, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed to Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their site using WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing to your site using WordPress plugins.
Most social share plugins allow you to choose 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 set up protected content areas on your pages which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help you drive more traffic to your site.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring layout and design aspects of your site, many themes also provide options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Additional Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic numbers, 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 when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you are making money online, you need to make sure that your site complies with government laws and regulations.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
If you need help understanding why it’s important to have a legally compliant website, go here:
Post Categories And Tags
WordPress post categories & tags help search engines better classify and index your website, which helps to increase traffic.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your web pages.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s tags and categories 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 set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits.
Visitor Site Map
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover more of your online content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. HTML site maps provide visitors with a visual map of how your content is organized, while XML sitemaps contain code that only search bots 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), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your 404 Page
When visitors enter the wrong URL or click on a dead hyperlink, they are presented with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 error page) …
(Default WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do is publish great content consistently to automatically attract web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website professionals a long time 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 the series.
This is the end of Section 3
To continue reading, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively using a WordPress-driven website and proven web marketing methods.
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