Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to generate more web traffic is publish new content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to get started 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 website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration phase of the traffic system. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site so you can ensure that web traffic will automatically start flowing as you start adding new content to your website.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business getting increasingly more competitive, it’s worth looking into any advantage available to get better results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage over the competition. With an expertly configured website, your business has a significant competitive advantage from the very beginning.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to understand the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a professional web presence plus an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All is running smoothly in the gizmo-making factory when all of a sudden, all machinery stops.
As no one can figure out what went wrong, the plant manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately walks to the control box. After staring at the board for 5 minutes, the expert then produces a teeny-weeny hammer and makes a single tap near the top-left edge of the unit.
Immediately, the machinery springs back to life.
The manager is relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a service bill for $5,000.
With great anger, the manager rings the expert. Demanding to know why they were charged such a large amount of money for less than five minutes work, he then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives and is placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic consistently to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for years spent building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress site set up so all you have to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest 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 site?)
Although the solution to many problems often seems ridiculously simple in hindsight, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party services need to be set up and activated to get certain outcomes
- Which options need to be configured to ensure that everything will function as expected, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. It’s not as easy as installing a piece of software, clicking a couple of buttons, or tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration stage is a process that involves your web server, your site, and a number of third-party sites or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simple diagram of the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes. What we are talking about, is tweaking settings in your webhosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic you can attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like configuring spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step is to set up and configure various external sites and services.
External Services
The idea behind choosing external sites is that all content will get published from one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get distributed automatically to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you add these external sites to your system, content with links pointing back to your website gets automatically added to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and site will be exposed to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of these sites will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s 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 Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important information, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account, your information can be used to automate web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, you can add traffic monitoring information to all of your web pages in WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins and feed data instantly to other online applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account and entering site data, use this information with web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress provides users with the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow 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 Part Four of this series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your various social accounts 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 and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick those that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will look at some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add a feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your account.
There are various platforms you can incorporate into your own traffic blueprint. 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 your WordPress site.
Configuring Your WordPress Site
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring WordPress Settings
The WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Screen)
As stated below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of 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)
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 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 to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your site 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 feature is enabled or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to automatically ping all the update services you have specified in the Update Services area whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – 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 blogs 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 Section)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings enable your site to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways search-friendly URLS can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about setting up WP permalinks, go here: Changing Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring Settings – WP Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality to your site, including traffic generation.
Here are 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 site is safe from being attacked.
(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:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving your website’s SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find and index, it also gives you control over how your content is displayed in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with their own friends and networks can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website using free or inexpensive plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins available for WordPress.
Many social plugins let you choose which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), 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 For Traffic Generation
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 the design and layout of your website, some themes also provide built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as clicking a few buttons and enabling the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Other Configuration Aspects For Your WordPress Site
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done.
(Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help understanding how to quickly add legal pages to your site, refer to this article:
Post Tags & Categories
Post categories & tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to classify and index your web pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s tags and categories should be reviewed and set up during the Website Planning Phases.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits.
HTML Site Map
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find your online 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 different things. 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 can result in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Forget To Configure It!
When visitors searching for your website enter the wrong web address or click on a hyperlink pointing to a destination on your site that no longer exists, they will normally be greeted with a 404 error page …
(A 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to begin bringing web traffic is add content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various components and web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website developers 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 WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This article is part of an tutorial series designed to help business owners learn how to grow their business using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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