Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your website using WordPress.
In Part One of this series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add new content on a regular basis to automatically attract new web traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. 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 where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. We will explain what makes an expertly configured site different, and just what type of work is required to make sure that when all is set up and fully configured, you can automatically bring web traffic as you start to post content on your website.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With competition becoming increasingly more difficult businesses are researching any opportunity they can to increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage. With an expertly configured website, your business has a flying start as soon as your site is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to explain the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take additional labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let me illustrate this with an amusing little story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All was going according to schedule in the widget-making workshop when suddenly, all machinery ground to a halt.
No one could figure out what went wrong and so the plant manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert went directly to the main control box. After staring silently at the board for less than 3 minutes, the expert then took out a tiny little hammer and made a gentle tap about one and half cm from the right corner of the control unit.
Immediately, everything came back to life.
The manager was relieved as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The factory manager rang back the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged so much for so little time delivering a minimal amount of work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is driving new visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when the equipment ground to a halt and no one in the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have every right to be compensated fairly for investing years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your website or blog set up so all you have to do is publish new content and search engines, social followers from Facebook and LinkedIn and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be automatically 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 many experts often make difficult things look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring a few internal settings. It requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts need to be set up to get specific results
- Which options you need to configure to make sure everything works as planned, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and 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, tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many different parts such as your server, your site, and various external sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a better look at these areas.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for website installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your server that affect how you will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your website can attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwelcome traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like implementing server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
After fine-tuning your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of external sites and services.
External Services
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all of your content is published from a central location (your site) and from there, it then gets automatically distributed to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external services into your setup, content linked back to your website will get automatically added to these platforms. Your website will then be given added exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some external sites will need to be set up before configuring your site to help speed up the process 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 Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with essential information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account and site data are set up, the account details can be used with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. 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, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your Google Analytics account and site data, you can add traffic tracking code to WordPress using a simple Google Analytics plugin and feed data automatically to various other useful applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account is set up, this information can be used with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers both a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your automated traffic generation system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and bring 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.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and get new visitors to your site.
You should have profiles with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just select those that will work with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(There are lots of social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse website.
There are various platforms you can incorporate into your web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(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 intentionally chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, 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 all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section …
(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 influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to view 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 search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to ping the list of update services whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although discussion settings 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow your site to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the options for configuring your SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up WP permalinks, go here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
WordPress Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to bring more visitors to your site
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is completely immune from being hacked.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to attacks from hackers and botnets.
For more details, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving improving the way search engines find and index your web pages …
(SEO plugins help increase traffic by making your website more search engine friendly)
Use a powerful 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 site easier for search engines to find, crawl and 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 Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are many free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social plugins let you select which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring Settings – WP Themes
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 website, some themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as clicking a few buttons to configure your settings and enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Additional WordPress Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for 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 do business online, you need to make sure that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
For a detailed article on how to quickly add legal pages to your site, go here:
Post Tags & Categories
Categories and post tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better index your web pages.
(Categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s categories and tags should be set up during the Website Planning Phases.
When configuring your website or blog to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags that have been set up.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover more of your web content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Only search engines can understand an XML sitemap. Although search engines like Google will index your site just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Configure Your WordPress 404 Error Page
When visitors searching for your site type in the wrong URL or click on an invalid hyperlink, they are greeted with a 404 Not Found page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional web pages …
(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 several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do to automatically start generating new web traffic is add fresh content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform this process typically takes some website professionals 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 the series.
This is the end of Part Three
To continue reading about this topic, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively using a WordPress website and proven marketing methods that are easy to implement.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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