Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive visitors automatically to your site using WordPress.
In Part One of this article 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 web site, all you have to do is post new content on a regular basis to automatically bring 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 has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic automation process. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to bring traffic automatically simply by adding fresh content to your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive worldwide and are exploring any advantage available to improve their performance online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. Having an expertly configured website gives you a flying start and an immediate competitive advantage online.
The Difference Is In The Configuration Stage
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 differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with 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 expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing little story.
Knowing Where To Tap
Things were going just fine in the gizmo assembly plant when all of a sudden, everything came to a halt.
No one could figure out what happened and so the manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrived and immediately headed towards the control box. After staring at the wiring diagrams for 2 minutes, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy hammer and made a gentle tap about 1 cm from the left corner of the control unit.
Immediately, everything in the workshop returned to normal.
The floor manager was relieved 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 factory manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay so much for so little time delivering such minimal amount of work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is driving new traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for years spent developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to immediately assess and repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your website or blog set up so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other web properties would be automatically 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?)
While experts often make difficult solutions look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few internal settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which services you need to set up and activate to achieve desired results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to make sure everything will work exactly as you expect, etc.
(Driving web 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 complicated. It’s not as easy as installing a plugin, tweaking some settings in your admin area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your server, your web site, and various external sites …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If all the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram of all the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Web Hosting
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for website installation purposes. We’re talking about configuring settings in your web server that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your business will attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like configuring spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites.
3rd-Party Sites
The concept behind choosing 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 traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external sites have been added to your system, content linked back to your site is automatically fed to search, social and aggregator accounts. Your content and business will be exposed to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some of these web properties and online platforms will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site to help save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts before configuring your WordPress site:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmasters – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with important information, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your Google Search Console account and site data are set up, your details can be used to automate web traffic-related settings 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 site’s traffic performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, 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 data, traffic tracking data can be integrated with WordPress via plugins used with other applications.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. After setting up your account and entering site details with Bing Webmaster Tools, you can use your details with web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress provides users with 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 tools, 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 web traffic system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need your social media accounts set up in order to configure these as part of 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 drive new visitors to your site.
You should have pages set up with all of the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(There are many social bookmarking sites you can syndicate your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans to suit different users.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse website.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your own traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(WordPress 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 or your webmaster have purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section lists only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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
***
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 readers when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website 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 your traffic system is concerned, however, the most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is ticked or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to notify various update services whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
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 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow your site to publish posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
Here are some of the ways your site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
To learn more about setting up WP permalinks, refer to this tutorial: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic to your site
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site 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, securing your websites is something you cannot afford to ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to attacks from hackers and botnets.
More info:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(WP Plugin – Yoast SEO)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) 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 find and index, it allows you to configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
WordPress Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your site using WordPress plugins)
There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social share plugins let you choose which social sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
WordPress – Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing features to your website is as easy as clicking a few buttons to configure your options and enable the function …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic System – Other Important Aspects To Consider
Last but not 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:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you make money online (or are planning to), you need to ensure that your site complies with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article on how to quickly add all necessary legal pages to your website or blog here:
WordPress Categories & Tags
WordPress post tags and categories help search engines better organize and index your pages, which improves traffic.
(Post categories help search engines better organize and index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s post tags and categories during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the categories and tags you have set up.
Visitor Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although search engines like Google can index your site 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.
Your Site’s 404 Page Not Found
When online visitors enter the wrong URL into their browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your website that no longer exist, they are presented with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do is post fresh content on a regular basis to automatically start generating web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website professionals months 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 the rest of this article, click here:
This article is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven web marketing methods.
Want To Get Automatically Notified When New WordPress Tutorials Are Published? Then Subscribe To Our Site!
***
"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com
***