Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a site into an automated web traffic generation machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add content on a consistent basis to automatically generate traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration stage of the traffic blueprint. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured in order to ensure that visitors will automatically start flowing as you begin adding content on a regular basis on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business getting ever more competitive worldwide, it’s worth exploring any advantage that can help you get better results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to describe the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is additional work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing anecdote.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All was humming along in the widget assembly workshop when everything came to a sudden stop.
As no one could figure out what happened, the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrived and went directly to the main control box. After staring at the wires and circuitry for no more than 5 minutes, the expert then took out a teeny-weeny little hammer from his tool box and made a very gentle tap near the left-hand edge of the box.
Immediately, everything returned once again to normal.
The plant manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days later, the factory manager received a bill for $5,000.
The factory manager called the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged such a large amount of money for so little time delivering such minimal amount of work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new traffic to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the business had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for investing years developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your WP website or blog fully configured so all you had to do is publish new content and search engines, social media and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
While the solution to many problems often seems quite simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to work things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few basic settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to get desired functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts need to be set up and activated to get specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to make sure processes will run as planned, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved and complicated. The reason why is because it’s not just about installing and configuring one or two plugins, configuring some settings in your admin area or clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different components including your web hosting server, your WordPress site, and various external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website 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 something like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your webhosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings in your server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your website can attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like integrating spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirects, etc?)
Once your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step is to configure a number of external sites or online solutions.
Configuring External Services
The concept behind choosing external sites is that all content is published to a central location (your site) and from there, it syndicates automatically to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external platforms have been added to your configuration, content pointing back to your website gets automatically published on search, social and aggregator accounts. Your site will benefit from exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some third-party sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site 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 Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with essential information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
Once your Google Search Console account and site details are set up, use this information to automate 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 performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, account code can be added to WordPress via any of several Google Analytics plugins 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 Webmaster Tools. Once your account and site details have been set up, this information can be used with web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part 2, WordPress offers both a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your web traffic system in Part 4 of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get 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.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we will review some of these tools in greater detail during the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to many social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many 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 to suit different user types.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse website.
There are various platforms that can be added to your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(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 purposely configured your settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services section
By default, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(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 Settings
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 have an influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to read the rest of the content from a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as traffic is concerned, however, the main setting in this section 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 your site to automatically notify your update services list when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(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 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 enable WordPress to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways your permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
For a detailed step-by-step tutorial about setting up WordPress permalinks, go here: Setting Up Your WordPress Permalinks
Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, website security is something you cannot ignore.
(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.
To learn more, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web content easy for search engines like Google to index …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugin)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your site’s SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your site easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index, it also lets you specify how to display your content to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if your site provides content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing features to your site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are loads of social sharing plugins to choose from.
Many social sharing plugins let you specify which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which users can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, many themes also include built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes can be configured for better traffic results)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic System – Additional Configuration
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online (or plan to), it’s important that your website is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate online business practices.
(Does Your Site Comply With The Law?)
To learn more about the importance of having a legally compliant website, go here:
Post Categories & Tags
WordPress post categories and tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your website.
(WordPress post categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps you get more traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your site’s categories and tags during the Website Planning Stage.
When configuring your site to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal results.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find more of your site’s 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. Although search engines like Google can index your site just using 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 results in increased traffic.
Your WordPress 404 Error Page
When visitors enter the wrong URL or click on an invalid link, they are presented with a 404 Not Found page …
(A 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 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 dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your website or blog expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to automatically bring more traffic is publish content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some web professionals a long time 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 Section 3
To read more, click here:
This article is part of an article series aimed at helping website owners learn how to grow their business with a WordPress-powered website and proven web marketing strategies.
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