Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new visitors automatically to your website using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to start driving traffic is post web content regularly!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase of this process. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section, we will look at the configuration phase of this process. You will understand what makes an expertly configured WordPress site different. You will also learn just what type of work needs to be done to make sure that when all is fully set up and configured, web traffic will automatically start flowing whenever you publish content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming increasingly more competitive and are exploring any advantage available to get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For business owners, having an expertly configured website means having an immediate competitive 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 web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take more work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Things were working according to schedule in the gizmo manufacturing plant when everything came to a sudden stop.
As no one could figure out what happened, the plant manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrived and walked immediately to the main control box. After staring silently at the schematics for no more than 2 minutes or so, the expert then took out a tiny hammer from his tool box and made a single tap near the top-right side of the box.
Immediately, the assembly line sprang to life.
The plant manager was overjoyed as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received a bill for $5,000.
The manager called the expert, demanding to know why they had been charged such a ludicrous fee for less than five minutes work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived 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 visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the factory stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to be compensated fairly for years spent acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately assess and repair a potentially costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a website configured so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other online properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
While experts often make complex situations and problems look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to work things out.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few internal settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which 3rd-party services need to be set up to get certain results
- Which options you need to configure in order to ensure that processes will run as expected, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and complicated. This is because it’s not as easy as installing a solution, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all this and much more.
The configuration stage is a process that involves your web hosting server, your WP site, and a number of external sites …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If the activities involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps in more detail.
Your 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 all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic your website may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like integrating server-level spam protection and threat prevention, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirects, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step is to configure various external sites or online services.
External Sites
The concept behind adding external sites is that all of your content will be published to one central location (your site) and from there, it will get distributed automatically to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external services into your system, content with links pointing back to your site gets automatically fed to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social networks, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your business will then be exposed to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these third-party sites and online solutions will need to be set up before configuring your 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 before configuring your WordPress settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of useful information, SEO tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site data with Google, use your account information to integrate and automate web traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data have been set up, your account code can be added to all pages in WordPress via plugins 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 details with Bing Webmaster Tools, the account information can be used with traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers a hosted and a self-hosted option. 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 some great tools, which can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your traffic system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social media and social bookmarking accounts set up before you can configure these as part of 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 sites and social bookmarking accounts and get new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have accounts set up with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are loads of social sites you can You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select the ones that will work well with your setup and/or content sharing tools (we will look at some of these tools in more detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to many social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Content Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of online technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress blog feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute your content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your account.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications that can be incorporated into your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s main settings …
(WordPress menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Section)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services box
By default, this section includes only one entry …
(WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(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 Settings
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can have an influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, 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.
The main setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to automatically ping all the update services you have listed in the Update Services area when 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 …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion Settings
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 …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways your permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
We have created a detailed tutorial about using permalinks here: Changing WordPress Permalinks
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugin Settings – Configuration
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are 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. No site is completely immune from a cyber attack.
(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.
Go here for more information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(WP SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your website’s SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find, classify and index, it also lets you specify how to present your content to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with their own networks can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing buttons to your website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their website using WordPress plugins.
Most social plugins let you select which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which visitors can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features
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 design and layout of your website, many themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons to your pages is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure For Increased Traffic
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Website Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to deal with good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you do business online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Or Blog Compliant?)
If you need help understanding how to quickly add legal pages to your website, go here:
WordPress Post Tags & Categories
WordPress post tags & post categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your web pages.
(WordPress categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s SEO.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your website’s post categories and tags should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Phases.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A Site Map
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications discover your online content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. Although Google can index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Your WordPress 404 Page
When visitors searching for your website type in the wrong URL or click on a dead hyperlink, they will typically be presented with a 404 page …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up on your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Stage – Summary
Once your site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then is add new content on a regular basis to automatically begin bringing more web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and knowledge involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes some website professionals months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 3
To continue reading about this topic, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively and drive traffic automatically with a WordPress website or blog and proven online marketing strategies.
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