Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new visitors automatically to your site using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is post fresh content on a regular basis to attract new web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. 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 site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In this article, we will discuss the configuration stage of the WordPress traffic automation system. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to automatically begin driving new traffic as you start to post fresh content on your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by many business owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business getting ever more competitive, it’s worth looking into any and every advantage that can help you get better results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. With an expertly configured WordPress site, you have an immediate competitive advantage from the word “go”.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant 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’s a simple way to explain the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress website gives you a web presence and online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only does a whole lot more work go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing anecdote.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Things are moving along in the gizmo assembly line when everything grinds to a sudden stop.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the manager decides to call in an expert.
The expert arrives shortly afterwards and immediately heads to the main control box. After staring silently at the wires and circuitry for what seems like 2 minutes or less, the expert then takes out a teensy-weensy little hammer from his shirt pocket and makes a gentle tap near the bottom-right side of the control unit.
Immediately, everything starts working as before.
The floor manager is filled with joy as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager receives a service bill for $5,000.
Feeling furious, the factory manager rings the expert. Demanding to know why they were expected to pay such a large amount of money for less than five minutes work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives and is placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening it, this is what he sees:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for years spent developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to immediately fix a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress website set up so all you have to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other web 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 driving traffic to your website?)
While the solution to many problems may seem quite easy once it’s been implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than simply installing a website and configuring site settings for the client. It involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which services need to be set up to achieve certain outcomes
- Which settings you need to configure to ensure that everything will work as envisioned, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. This is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a plugin, clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of many parts including your web hosting server, your web site, and various third-party sites and services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If all the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine what’s involved.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is configuring settings and options in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your website may attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is all about planning for both bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring your domain and email redirections, setting up htaccess redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been checked and configured, the next step is to configure a number of third-party sites.
External Accounts
The concept behind choosing external sites is that all of your content should be posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get syndicated automatically to other parts of your traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external services into your network, content linked back to your site will get automatically added to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social networks, even to users of the platform itself. Your content will be given added exposure to a new audience and new sources of traffic.
Some external sites and online services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress settings 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 Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmaster Tools lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential data, SEO tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account and site data with Google are set up, you can use the information with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up Google Analytics, your account information can be integrated with WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins and and sent to many other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account with Bing Webmaster Tools have been set up, this information can be used to integrate and automate traffic-related settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you plan to grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated web traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site)
You will need to set up your social accounts before you can 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 get new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts and profile pages with all of the leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose those that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to many social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse account.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications that can be added to your own web traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site For Traffic
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
Your WordPress dashboard area contains a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains an important and frequently overlooked built-in traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Area)
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 intentionally chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is available …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section …
(You can 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 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 content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website to get 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 most important setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly notify various update services when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress 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 content, 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)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways your permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
For a detailed tutorial on setting up permalinks in WordPress, go here: How To Improve Your WordPress SEO With SEO-Friendly URLs
Configuring Settings – WordPress Plugins
WordPress provides users with thousands of plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that affect traffic generation
Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is immune from being targeted.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your blog invisible to botnets and hackers.
Go here for more info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your website more search engine friendly …
(Yoast SEO – WP Plugins For SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index, it also gives you control over how your content is presented to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with members of their social communities can help to increase traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins available for WordPress users.
Many social plugins allow you to specify 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 likes), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress – Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, many themes also provide built-in options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a highly customizable free theme) allow you to configure settings for improved traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
Other Configuration Areas For WordPress Traffic
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the areas that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only for how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do business online, you need to make sure that your website is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
We have created a detailed article about the importance of having a legally compliant website here:
Post Tags & Categories
Post categories & tags help search engines index your website, which improves traffic.
(WordPress post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s post categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Phases.
When looking at ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages 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 traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Your 404 Page Not Found
When online visitors type in the wrong URL into their browser or click on a hyperlink pointing to a destination on your website that no longer exists, they will normally be greeted with an error page (known as a 404 Not Found page) …
(A 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up on your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your website has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then is post great content regularly to begin bringing new 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 components and external web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The kind of skills and knowledge required to perform the configuration process typically takes some website developers months to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is explained in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section Three
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 and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress website and proven web marketing strategies.
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