Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new traffic automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS.
In Part One of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is add new content regularly to bring more traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the blueprint. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will discuss the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will help you understand what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different, and how much work needs to be done to ensure that when all is fully set up and configured, you can automatically begin driving new visitors as you start posting new content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive on a global scale and are exploring any advantage they believe will improve their results and performance online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage over other competitors. With an expertly configured WordPress site, your business has a significant competitive advantage from the very start.
The Configuration Stage 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 a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to describe the main 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 an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate 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) …
Things were going well in the widget-making factory when all of a sudden, production came to a complete stop.
No one could figure out what happened and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert walked immediately to the main control box. After staring silently at the schematics for no more than 3 minutes or so, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny little hammer and made a single tap near the right edge of the box.
Immediately, everything sprang to life.
The manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors consistently to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one in the factory floor had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to be compensated fairly for having spent years building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a web site fully set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and search engines, social media and dozens of other traffic-generating online 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 website?)
Although many experts often make complex solutions look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than installing a website and configuring site settings for clients. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts you need to set up to get certain outcomes
- Which settings need to be configured in order to ensure that processes will run to plan, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved. It’s not just about installing one or two plugins, clicking a couple of buttons, or tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration stage is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your WordPress site, and a number of external sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps in more detail.
Your Web Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your hosting account that affect how your site 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 traffic your business will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like integrating server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up 404 error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these, the next step is to configure a number of external sites.
Third-Party Accounts Integration
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all of your content should be published to one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, radiate outwards to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external platforms into your traffic network, content with links pointing back to your site is automatically posted to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your website will receive exposure online, helping you tap into a new audience and traffic source.
Some sites and services will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to help 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:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters)
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 important information, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account is set up, you can use the account information with traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site details are set up, visitor tracking information can be added to WordPress via a simple plugin used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account has been set up, this information can be used to automate traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress provides users with a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need your social accounts set up before you can 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 accounts and bring new visitors to your site.
You should set up accounts and profiles with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose those that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online web platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse page.
There are various sites and platforms that can be added to your traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog For Traffic
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress – Global Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to website 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 or your webmaster have purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of update services entered into the Update Services text box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section …
(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 traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your site to get the rest of the content from excerpts, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly ping all the update services you have listed in the Update Services section whenever new posts are 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 Screen)
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 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings Section)
The examples below show some of the ways permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring permalinks)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress – Traffic Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s take a brief look at 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 site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is safe from cyber-attacks.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
Go here for more info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving how search engines find, crawl and index your web pages …
(WordPress SEO plugins help increase traffic by improving your site’s ability to rank better in search engines)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google to index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing 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.
(You can add social sharing features to your website easily with WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing features to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to choose which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content 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 improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also include built-in options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings and options for better traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your content is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other WordPress Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic system configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for both bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online, you need to make sure that your site stays compliant with all government laws and regulations.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
If you need help understanding how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your WordPress site, go here:
Tags And Categories
WordPress post categories & tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your website.
(Post categories help search engines better organize and index your web pages, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s post tags and categories during the Website Planning Stages.
When considering ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories that have been 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, it can also help external tools find your website content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, whereas an XML sitemap is mostly filled with code that only search engine bots can interpret. Although search engines like Google can index your site just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page Not Found – Don’t Forget This!
When online users type in the wrong URL or click on an invalid link, they are greeted with an error page …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 Not Found page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 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 area.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your site fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do to automatically start generating web traffic is publish great content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various elements and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise required to perform this phase of the traffic automation process can take some website developers 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 covered in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help you learn how to grow your business using a WordPress website and proven online marketing methods.
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