Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a website into an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is post new content consistently to start attracting web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section, we will discuss the configuration phase of this process. We explain what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different, and what kind of work is required to ensure that when all is set up and fully configured, visitors will automatically start flowing simply by regularly adding new content on your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business getting increasingly more competitive, it’s worth learning about any advantage available to get better results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage over the competition. For businesses, an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start from the moment their website is launched.
Configuration Is 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 take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s a simple way to describe the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let me illustrate this point with an amusing anecdote.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Everything was going just fine in the widget-making workshop when things suddenly stopped.
As no one could figure out what happened, the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert headed immediately towards the control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for no more than 5 minutes, the expert then took out a teensy-weensy hammer and made a single tap near the right side of the control unit.
Immediately, everything returned to normal.
The plant manager was overjoyed 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 request for payment of services rendered totalling $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them so much for less than 5 minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived and was placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to demand fair compensation for having invested years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress site fully set up and configured so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other online 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 attracting new visitors to your site?)
While many experts often make difficult things look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few settings. It involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to achieve specific results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to ensure that things will work the way you have planned, etc.
(Generating 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 difficult, it can be quite involved and time-consuming. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing and configuring a plugin, configuring some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of many different components including your web server, your WP site, and various external sites and online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simple flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram of the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Server Configuration
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 tweaking settings in your web hosting account that affect how your website will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your business may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like configuring server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
Once your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites and services.
External Services
The basic idea of adding external sites is that all content should be posted to one central location (your site) and from there, radiate outwards to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external platforms into your system, content with links pointing back to your site is automatically published on these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social sites, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and site will be exposed to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site to speed up the configuration 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 site)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of essential data, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your Google Webmaster Tools account and entering site data, use this information to automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic results, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your account, your account data can be easily integrated with WordPress using a plugin and and fed to other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. After setting up your Bing Webmaster Tools account, your information can be used to automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, 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 these features into your web traffic system in Part 4 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 various social media and social bookmarking accounts set up in order to 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 bring new traffic to your site.
You should set up accounts and profiles with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can syndicate your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose the ones that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools (we cover some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to many social bookmarking sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
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 social feed.
There are many different platforms that can be incorporated into your own traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website
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 points.
Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Screen)
As described 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 intentionally configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services section
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section lists only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can 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 influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to view the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to notify your list of update services when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion Settings
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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks Section)
Here are some of the options for configuring your permalinks …
(Configuring permalinks)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, see this tutorial: Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
Configuring Settings – WP Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No blog is completely immune from cyberattacks.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnets and hackers.
Go here to learn more:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO Plugin)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s search engine optimization. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social features to your site easily with WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site with WordPress plugins.
Most social sharing plugins let you specify which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which visitors 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 can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your website, many themes also give you options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your site is as easy as clicking a couple of buttons to configure your options and enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic System Configuration – Other Steps
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of business online, it’s important that your site stays compliant with all government regulations.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
For a detailed article on how to quickly and easily add legal pages to your WordPress website, go here:
WordPress Post Categories And Tags
Tags & post categories help search engines index your website, which improves traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your web pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s post tags and post categories during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories that have been set up.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that lists all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover your site’s 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 not the same things. Although Google can index your pages just from 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 can result in increased traffic.
Don’t Forget Your 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching online for your website enter the wrong URL into their browser or click on links pointing to pages on your website that no longer exist, they will typically be presented with an error page (known as a 404 error page) …
(Default WordPress 404 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 plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then is post web content regularly to begin attracting traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website professionals a long time to acquire.
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 our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section Three
To keep reading this article, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven online marketing methods.
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