Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is post fresh content on a consistent basis to attract new web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we discuss the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. We will help you understand why an expertly configured site is different, and how much work needs to be done to ensure that when all is set up and fully configured, new visitors will automatically start flowing when you begin to add web content on your website.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as the greatest challenge they face online. Also, the business landscape is becoming ever more competitive and businesses are looking for every opportunity they can to get better results online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a tremendous competitive advantage. With an expertly configured WordPress site, your business has an immediate competitive advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to explain the key difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is extra work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this here’s an amusing little story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All is moving along in the gizmo-making assembly line when things grind to a sudden stop.
As no one can figure out what went wrong, the floor manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrives and, without saying a word, walks immediately towards the control box. After staring silently at the wiring board for about 5 minutes, the expert then produces a teensy-weensy little hammer from his utility belt and makes a very gentle tap near the right-hand side of the control unit.
Immediately, the assembly line springs back to life.
The manager is relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request for payment of services rendered for the amount of $5,000.
Angrily, the factory manager picks up the phone and calls the expert. Demanding to know why the expert has charged them so much for less than 5 minutes work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives and is placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive visitors to their sites.
How much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one in the factory floor had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for having spent years acquiring the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to assess and avert a serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your website or blog set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other online properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
Although many experts often make difficult situations and problems look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring settings for the client. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to add certain functionalities to your site.
- Which services need to be set up to achieve certain outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to make sure processes will work as expected, etc.
(Driving web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved and time-consuming. It’s not as simple as installing and configuring one or two plugins, configuring some settings in your dashboard area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration stage is a process that involves 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 try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is tweaking settings in your hosting account specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the traffic you will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This aspect of the configuration process, therefore, requires evaluating your needs, planning for both bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page error redirections, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites.
External Services
The basic idea of setting up external sites is that all of your content should be published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will radiate outwards to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external platforms have been added to your configuration, content with links pointing back to your site will be automatically fed to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your site will then receive additional exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some sites and online platforms will need to be set up before configuring your WordPress site to help speed up the configuration process 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 site:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential information, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account with Google Search Console have been set up, you can use this information to integrate and automate web traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
After setting up your account and site details, tracking information can be easily integrated with WordPress via a simple plugin used with other applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account and site details are set up, use the information to automate traffic-related settings 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 a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) 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 can be accessed by a number of WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your automated traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your social accounts set up 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 sites and drive new traffic to your site.
You should have pages set up with all the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just pick the ones that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will review some of these tools in greater detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(You can syndicate your content to many social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add a feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
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 page.
There are many different solutions you can add to your own traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore this area further and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global Settings
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally configured your settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services section
By default, when WordPress is installed, this section lists only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
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 web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying 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 get the rest of the content from summaries, 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 feature is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to automatically ping your list of update services when new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion Settings
Although this section is 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)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the ways post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
We have created a detailed tutorial on using permalinks in WordPress here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring Settings – WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your website, including traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website is completely immune from a cyber attack.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to hackers and bots.
Go here to learn more:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO …
(Yoast SEO – WP SEO Plugin)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s SEO. When properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to share your content with their friends and networks can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily with free or inexpensive plugins)
You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily with free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social share plugins let you select which social 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 likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring design and layout aspects of your site, many themes also give you built-in options for improving SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure settings and options for better traffic results)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Configuring Other WordPress Sections
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business when more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online, it’s important that your website stays compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done.
(Does Your Website Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
WordPress Categories And Tags
WordPress post categories & tags help search engines index your pages, which improves traffic.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we recommend in this article, your website’s categories and tags should be reviewed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
When looking at 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 and results.
Add A Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find your site’s content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. Although Google will index your site just from 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 Site’s 404 Page Not Found
When online users type in the wrong web address into their browser or click on a dead link, they will normally be presented with a 404 Not Found error page …
(Default WordPress 404 Page)
A 404 Not Found error page can redirect confused visitors to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to generate more web traffic is add content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(WP Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The expertise required to perform the configuration process typically takes many web professionals a long time to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read the rest of this article, 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 cost-effectively and drive traffic automatically with a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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