Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your website using WordPress.
In Part One of this series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is add web content on a consistent basis to bring traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase of the automation process. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence 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 two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to automatically bring new traffic whenever you add web content to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Also, the business landscape is becoming ever more competitive and businesses are looking for any opportunity they can to get better results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage over other competitors. An expertly configured website gives your business a flying start as soon as your website is launched.
The Configuration Process Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Everything was moving along in the gizmo-making plant when things came to a sudden stop.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert headed immediately towards the main control box. After staring at the wires and circuitry for less than 3 minutes, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny little hammer and made a single tap near the left-hand corner of the box.
Immediately, everything returned once again to normal.
The manager was greatly relieved as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the manager received a request of payment for services rendered for the amount of $5,000.
The manager picked up the phone and called the expert, demanding to know why he had charged them so much for so little time spent delivering such a minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived and was placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the factory stand to lose when the machines ground to a halt and no one on the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to demand fair compensation for investing years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly assess and repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a web site configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although experts often make difficult things look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy when you try to work things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring a few basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins need to be installed for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve certain results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure to ensure that everything will function to plan, etc.
(Generating new 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. It’s not as simple as installing and configuring a solution, tweaking some settings in your admin area or clicking a button … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration phase is a complex process that involves your web server, your site, and various external sites and/or online services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we create a simple diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a brief look at what’s involved.
Configuring The Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your hosting account for website installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings and options in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your website may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these, the next step is to set up and configure a number of external sites and services.
Integration With External Accounts
The idea behind setting up external sites is that all of your content is posted to a central location (your site) and from there, it then gets automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external services have been added to your traffic system, content linked back to your site will be automatically added to these platforms. Your content will be given exposure to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some third-party sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site’s settings to help speed up the configuration process 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 site’s settings:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmaster Tools – create a Google-friendly site)
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 essential information, tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site data, you can use your details to automate web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data are set up, tracking information can be added to WordPress using a simple plugin used with other applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account and entering site data, use your account information with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to build a professional online 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 at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your traffic system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your social media and social bookmarking accounts 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 pages and drive new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose the ones that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools.
(There are loads of social sites you can post your content to. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online web platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add a feed from your WordPress site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your social feed.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications that can be added to your own web traffic system. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a configuration plan to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
Configuring WordPress For Traffic
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most important and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the update services entered into the Update Services section
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(WordPress Update Services)
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 Settings
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 influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could affect 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 a partial feed, 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 main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Typically, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows your site to instantly notify all the update services you have listed whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
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 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 …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to display posts with SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways permalink URLs can be configured …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, refer to this step-by-step tutorial: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings
WordPress provides users with plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help improve traffic generation
Blog Defender WordPress Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling 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, you cannot ignore the importance of website security.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to attacks from hackers and bots.
To learn more, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving how search engines like Google and Bing find, classify and index your web pages …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO Plugin)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you provide content that adds real value to readers.
(You can easily add social features to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are many free or inexpensive social sharing plugins available for WordPress.
Many social share plugins allow you to select which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social sharing plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
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 layout and design elements of your website, many themes also provide built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes like Graphene (a free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your content is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
Configuring Other WordPress Areas
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic configuration process, are the elements that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you make money online, it’s important that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Comply With The Law?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
Post Tags And Post Categories
Post categories & tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your pages.
(Post categories help to improve your site’s search optimization, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your site’s post tags and post categories during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although search engines like Google can index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Your 404 Error Page
When visitors type in the wrong URL into their web browser or click on links pointing to an incorrect destination on your website, they will typically be greeted with a 404 error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)
A 404 page can be configured to funnel visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your web server, there are several WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is publish content on a regular basis to bring web traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and knowledge required to perform the configuration process can take many website developers months to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is addressed in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read more, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively using a WordPress website or blog and proven online marketing methods.
Would You Like To Get Automatically Notified When New Tutorials Get Published? Then Subscribe To Our Site!
***
"Learning WordPress has been a huge stumbling block for me. I've been looking for something that covers absolutely everything but doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Thank you so much ... you have just provided me with what I have been looking for! Truly appreciated!" - Tanya
***