Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically start attracting web traffic is publish fresh content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start 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 existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will discuss the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will show you why an expertly configured site is different than a professionally configured site, and how much work is required to make sure that when all is set up and fully configured, you can get new traffic automatically when you publish content to your site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business becoming so much more competitive worldwide, it’s worth exploring every opportunity you can to improve your own performance online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website allows their business to get off with a flying start from the moment their website is launched.
The Difference Is In The Configuration
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 take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s a simple way to describe the differences:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take more work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this here’s a little story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Things were humming along in the widget assembly workshop when everything ground to a sudden stop.
As no one could figure out what happened, the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived soon afterwards and immediately went towards the main control box. After staring silently at the circuit board for less than 3 minutes or so, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny hammer and made a single tap about one inch from the top-right side of the unit.
Immediately, every machine returned to normal.
The floor manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The manager dialled the expert, demanding to know why the expert had charged them so much for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the plant stand to lose when production 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 the right to be compensated fairly for having spent years building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WP site set up and configured so all you have to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other web properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
While the solution to many challenges can seem ridiculously easy once implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring some basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which services need to be set up to achieve specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured in order to make sure everything will work as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. This is because it’s not as easy as installing a plugin, clicking a button, or tweaking some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of various different components including your server, your website, and various external sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart of the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved in more detail.
Configuring Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your server that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your site may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like implementing spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess and error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
After your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various third-party sites.
Integration With External Solutions
The basic idea of adding external sites is that all content will be posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it will be automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external platforms have been added to your network, content pointing back to your website will get automatically added to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social sites, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your site will receive exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some third-party sites and online solutions will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress settings to help speed up the configuration 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 Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website or blog)
Google Webmasters lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of useful information, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
After setting up your Google Search Console account and entering site data, your information can be used with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic results, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data have been set up, you can add tracking information to WordPress via a plugin and feed data automatically to various other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account is set up, your details can be used with traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers both the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which a number of 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 article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and get new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your social accounts before you can 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 sites and get new visitors to your site.
Set up accounts with all of the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can You can syndicate your content to loads of social sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can post your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your social feed.
There are various sites and platforms that can be added to your web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore some of these further and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically chosen to prevent 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 box
By default, this section displays only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section and WordPress takes care of the rest …
(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 visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website 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 most important setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables WordPress to instantly notify all the update services you have listed whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although discussion settings are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Permalinks enable your site to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s search-friendly URLS …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, see this tutorial: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help to increase traffic
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot ignore the importance of securing your websites.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
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 making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(SEO plugins help increase traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with others online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are many free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social plugins let you specify which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default 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 linking or tweeting your page.
WP 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, many themes also provide built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) allow you to configure settings and options for better traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Configuration – Other Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good 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, it’s important that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
Post Tags And Categories
Post categories and tags help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps to increase traffic.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your web pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post tags and categories should be set up during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, 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 lists all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications find more of your online content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. HTML site maps are web pages that link to all other content on your site and provide visitors with a visual map of how your content is organized, whereas XML sitemaps are code that only search bots can interpret. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Your 404 Page
When online visitors enter the wrong URL or click on an invalid link, they will normally be greeted with an error page (known as a 404 error page) …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can be configured into a useful source of traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up on your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then to start generating web traffic is post new content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many web developers months to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next section of our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part 3
To keep reading about this topic, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive tutorial series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively and drive traffic organically with a WordPress-driven website and proven web marketing strategies.
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