Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically bring web traffic is publish new content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase of the blueprint. 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 existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration phase of this process. We will explain what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different, and how much work needs to be done to ensure that when all is set up and configured, new traffic will automatically start flowing when you begin to publish content regularly on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business getting ever more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth learning about any advantage that can help you get better results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over the competition. For business owners, an expertly configured website gives WordPress users a flying start as soon as their site is launched.
The Configuration Stage Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to describe the differences:
With a WordPress site 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 a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this point here is a joke.
Knowing Where To Tap
All is moving along in the widget assembly workshop when everything suddenly just stops.
No one can figure out what’s gone wrong and so the floor manager decides to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert goes immediately to the control box. After staring at the schematics for 5 minutes, the expert then produces a tiny hammer and makes a single tap near the left-hand edge of the box.
Immediately, the whole machine begins to work again.
The manager is overjoyed as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Bordering on outrage, the manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why they have been charged so much for less than five minutes work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for investing years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a site fully set up and configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networking sites and dozens of other traffic-generating web 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 driving traffic to your website?)
Although experts often make complex solutions look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to figure things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site is more than simply installing a website and configuring some of the site settings for clients. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to get specific results
- Which settings need to be configured to ensure that everything functions to plan, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. It’s not just about installing and configuring a plugin, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web server, your website or blog, and various external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at these areas.
Your Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your server that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your business may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites and/or online services.
Integration With External Sites
The idea behind setting up external sites is that all of your content will be published from one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get automatically distributed to other components of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external services have been added to your traffic network, content pointing back to your website will get automatically published on these platforms. Your site will receive exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings to save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with essential information, tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account has been with Google have been set up, you can use this information with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrers, etc.
After setting up your up your Google Analytics account and entered your site details, account information can be added to WordPress using a simple plugin used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account and site data with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, the details can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to build a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your traffic system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social media accounts in order to configure these as part of 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 traffic to your site.
You should set up profiles with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can syndicate your content to. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose the ones that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools (we cover some of these tools in greater detail further below and during the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. 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 an RSS feed from your WordPress blog …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse social feed.
There are various sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your 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 web server and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Global WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
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 in this section can influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could affect 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.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Typically, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to ping various update services when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, make sure this box is left unticked …
(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 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 Section)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s permalink URLs …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to increase traffic
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot ignore the importance of website security.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and bots.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving how search engines like Google and Bing find, crawl and index your website …
(WordPress SEO plugins help increase traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can significantly improve your SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins let you choose which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Features In Themes
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 layout and design of your website, some themes also give you built-in options for improving search optimization and site linking structure for better indexing, add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) can be configured for improved traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as clicking a few buttons to configure your options and enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure
Last but not least in the traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online, you need to make sure that your website is compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
For a detailed article about why it’s important to have a compliant website, refer to this article:
WordPress Categories And Tags
Tags and post categories help search engines better classify and index your web pages, which helps you get more traffic.
(Post categories help search engines index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and post categories should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Phase.
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 and results.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A visitor site map that lists all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites find your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, while an XML sitemap is mostly code that only search engine bots can read. Although search engines like Google will index your site 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 can result in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When visitors searching online for your site enter the wrong URL into their browser or click on a link pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they are presented with an error – page not found message (known as a 404 page) …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your web server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to automatically start attracting web traffic is add great content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is covered in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part 3
To continue reading this article, click on the link below:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help small business owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-driven website or blog and proven web marketing methods.
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