Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your site using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to attract more traffic is publish web content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we focused on critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started 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 website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic system. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site so you can automatically begin to get visitors whenever you post content to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
Being able to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. With business becoming so much more competitive worldwide, it’s worth exploring every opportunity you can to improve your results online.
Being able to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide website owners with a huge competitive advantage. With an expertly configured WordPress site, you have a significant 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 understand the differences:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence plus an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take more work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a little story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Things are humming along in the gizmo assembly line when suddenly, the equipment stops.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the floor manager decides to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert walks directly towards the main control box. After staring at the electronic components for less than 5 minutes or so, the expert then produces a little hammer from his tool belt and makes a gentle tap about one cm from the left edge of the box.
Immediately, every machine starts working as before.
The plant manager is relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the manager receives an invoice for $5,000.
Bewildered and angry, the manager rings the expert. Why have they had been charged so much for less than 5 minutes work? He then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when the equipment stopped working and no one on the factory floor had the expertise required to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for spending years developing the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to quickly avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress web site configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other web properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
Although experts often make complex situations and problems look simple, it rarely turns out to be that way.
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 like:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve certain results
- Which settings need to be configured to make sure things function to plan, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this stage of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem technically challenging, it can be quite complicated. It’s not as easy as installing a plugin, configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area or clicking on a button or two … it’s all of this and much more.
The configuration stage is a process that involves your server, your web site, and a number of external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps in more detail.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your webhosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your web hosting account that affect how you will handle web traffic …
(In the configuration stage, your web-hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the traffic you may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes looking at things like implementing server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, setting up 404 error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step is to configure various third-party sites and services.
Integration With External Solutions
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all of your content will get published from a central location (your site) and from there, it will get distributed automatically to other components of your traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external services into your network, content linked back to your site will get automatically posted to search, social and aggregator sites. Your website will then receive exposure online, helping you tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these third-party web properties and online solutions will need to have accounts 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:
Google Webmasters
(Google Webmasters – 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 you with a range of essential information, tools and reports about your website.
Once your account has been set up, you can use your details with traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and organic referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, you can add traffic tracking code to all of your web pages in WordPress using a plugin and feed data automatically to various other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, your account information can be used to integrate and automate traffic settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress provides users with a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, 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 these features into your automated traffic generation system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need to have already set up your social accounts before you can integrate these with 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 drive new traffic to your site.
You should have accounts with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, 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 with your setup and/or content syndication tools.
(You can post your content to many social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your page.
There are various platforms you can incorporate into your traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your site.
Configuring Your WordPress Site
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains an important and often overlooked traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have specifically chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, this section includes only one entry …
(Update Services)
WordPress lets you 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 your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence web traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text 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 decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog 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.
The main setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is enabled or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows WordPress to notify all the update services you have listed in the Update Services section whenever new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion Settings
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 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 your site to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways your SEO-friendly URLs can be configured …
(Configuring SEO-friendly URLs)
To learn more about setting up permalinks in WordPress, see this step-by-step tutorial: How To Set Up WordPress Permalinks
WordPress – Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add just about every type of functionality to your website, including plugins with features that help to improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No website or blog is guaranteed immunity from cyber attacks.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to malicious attacks from hackers and botnets.
More info:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages more indexable …
(Yoast SEO – WP SEO Plugin)
Use a plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
WordPress Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content online can help boost traffic to your site, especially if you post great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using free or inexpensive plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with free or inexpensive plugins.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to specify which social 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 shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which users can unlock by sharing 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 the design and layout of your website, many themes also give you options for improving SEO and site navigation structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes allow you to configure settings and options for better traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as clicking a few buttons to configure your options and enable the feature …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure For Better Traffic Results
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic blueprint configuration process, are the things 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 handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of business online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
For a detailed article on how to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress website, refer to this article:
Post Tags And Post Categories
Post categories and post tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better understand and index your website.
(Post categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search engine optimization.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and categories should be set up during the Website Planning Stages.
When configuring your site to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s tags and categories have been set up correctly to deliver optimal results.
Add A Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, while an XML sitemap is mostly code that only search engines can understand. Although Google will index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
Your Site’s 404 Page
When online users enter the wrong web address into their web browser or click on links pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they will normally be greeted with a 404 page …
(A WordPress 404 Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site has been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then to bring web traffic is add content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform this phase of the traffic automation process typically takes many website developers a long time 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 System 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 articles aimed at helping website owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively and drive traffic organically with a WordPress website and proven online marketing methods.
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