Welcome to Part Three of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new visitors automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to begin bringing more web traffic is add great content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase of this process. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we discuss the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. We will show you how a WordPress site should be configured in order to ensure that traffic will automatically start flowing whenever you post fresh content on your WordPress site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
The ability to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive worldwide and are looking for any advantage available to get better results online.
Having the ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge advantage over other competitors. With an expertly configured website, you have a flying start and an immediate advantage online.
The Configuration Stage Is What Makes All The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website developer but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to describe the key difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a professional web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only are more steps required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Allow me to illustrate this point with an amusing little story.
A Semi-True Story …
All was going well in the gizmo assembly plant when production suddenly stopped.
As no one could figure out what happened, the manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrived and, without saying a word, immediately walked towards the control box. After staring silently at the wiring diagrams for 5 minutes or less, the expert then produced a teensy-weensy hammer from his tool box and made a gentle tap near the left-hand edge of the control unit.
Immediately, the machinery started working once again.
The floor manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left just 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 called the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged such a ludicrous fee for less than 5 minutes work and then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived and was placed in the manager’s intray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have the right to be compensated fairly for having spent years building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to quickly repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP blog set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social followers from sites like Facebook and LinkedIn 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 the solution to many challenges may seem quite easy in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few settings. It also requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which plugins you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which services you need to set up and activate to get desired results
- Which settings you need to configure in order to make sure processes will work exactly as you would like, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite complicated. It’s not as simple as installing and configuring a plugin, configuring some settings in your dashboard area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and so much more.
The configuration phase involves the integration of different parts such as your web hosting server, your website or blog, and various external sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If we create a simple flowchart of the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a better look at these areas.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your web server that affect how your site will handle web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your website may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like configuring spam protection and securing server files, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites and services.
External Sites & Solutions – Configuration
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all content should be published from one central location (your site) and from there, be distributed automatically to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external platforms into your system, content linking back to your site will be automatically added to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social media accounts, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your website will be exposed to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these external sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site’s settings to 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:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of essential data, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
Once your account has been with Google have been set up, the information can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, traffic tracking information can be added to WordPress using a simple Google Analytics plugin and and fed to other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account and site details with Bing Webmaster Tools have been set up, this information can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to grow a professional web presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated traffic generation system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media and social bookmarking 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 and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles set up with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we will cover some of these tools in more detail in the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse account.
There are many different sites and platforms you can incorporate into your web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up third-party service accounts, it’s time to configure your site’s settings.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(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 or your webmaster have purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services box
By default, this section lists only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section …
(WordPress lets you 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 your content gets seen by visitors 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 content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to read 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 feature is ticked or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to automatically notify various update services whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Section)
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 sites 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 you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – 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 step-by-step tutorial: Configuring WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more visitors to your site
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling 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 site.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to attacks from hackers and botnets.
For more information, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages easy for search engines like Google to index …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress SEO Plugin)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also lets you specify how to present your content in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with members of their own social communities can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their website with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are loads of social sharing plugins available for WordPress.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to select which 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 sections on your pages which users can unlock by liking your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can 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, many themes also give you built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure settings and options for better traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Additional Configuration Areas For WordPress
Last (but by no means least) in the configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you do business online (or plan to), it’s important that your website stays compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
WordPress Categories & Tags
Post categories and tags help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your website’s post tags and post categories during the Website Planning Process.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, 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 benefits.
Add A Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover more of your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Only search engines can understand an XML sitemap. Although Google can index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page – An Additional Source Of Web Traffic!
When visitors enter the wrong web address into their web browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your site that no longer exist, they will normally be greeted with a 404 Not Found page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 Error Page can be configured to redirect confused visitors to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your web server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then to automatically begin bringing new web traffic is post content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of expertise required to perform the configuration phase of the traffic automation process can take some website professionals months to learn.
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 explained in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of an tutorial series aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively and drive traffic organically using a WordPress website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
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